Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
The patents are all related to key smartphone experiences that include syncing e-mails, calendars, and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications about changes in signal strength and battery power. Microsoft specifically names two Motorola devices, the Droid 2 and the Charm, but says these are just examples and not a comprehensive list."
Florian Mueller has posted his first reaction to the news here.
Posted Oct 1, 2010 23:58 UTC (Fri)
by jd (guest, #26381)
[Link] (2 responses)
The reason I'd prefer that is that whilst I dispute the validity of software patents, the courts are wary of getting into that territory. On the other hand, we already have a well-defined (albeit narrow) ruling that the courts can go along with without feeling guilty over it.
The more that industry is forced to concede purely within the scope of that ruling, the less likely industry is to go down the path of patenting code. Being beaten in the courts threatens too much.
Sure, they may well decide to lobby Congress to develop a new form of IP to go along with trademarks, copyright and patents, but even that would force them to admit that it is not an invention in the accepted sense of the word.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 18:49 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (1 responses)
There are various tactical options for the plaintiffs. I have just published two blog postings with further information for those interested in how quickly this might be resolved and to what degree this could escalate. I have also put together a categorized overview of all the patents asserted by Apple, Oracle and Microsoft against Android. Android caught in a crossfire of patents (possible escalation, categorized overview of patents) The US International Trade Commission as a patent enforcement agency (import of Motorola Droid could be banned within 18 months)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 7:28 UTC (Mon)
by tuxmania (guest, #70024)
[Link]
I dont really understand why you run around playing Microsofts tune to the note.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 3:29 UTC (Sat)
by ikm (guest, #493)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 3:56 UTC (Sat)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 5:04 UTC (Sat)
by ikm (guest, #493)
[Link]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 7:04 UTC (Sat)
by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
[Link] (15 responses)
Does anyone really believe that any of these patents describe anything beyond the ability of a smart junior high school student? One with no particular knowledge of anything that has happened in computers in decades? It is not like any of these things are actual "inventions". They are just land grabs of obvious, hum-drum, run of the mill ideas that no one bothered to patent before either because it was a waste of money, they couldn't afford it, software patents were not allowed, or the field wasn't hot enough at the time to justify the mine laying costs.
Imagine if patents were available under the present day standards of the USPTO at $1 each. Every programmer on the planet could submit the latest combination of obvious run of the mill software engineering of the sort that has been known since the sixties, and the computer world (and every other field of industry and technology) would grind to a halt overnight. Each of them, obviously, in the hands of a good troll is worth several hundred million dollars, no?
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:18 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (7 responses)
Does anyone really believe that any of these patents describe anything beyond the ability of a smart junior high school student? Well, evidently the Patent and Trademark Office does. Given that they're as obvious as you say, it's kind of surprising that no one has ever tried taking this tack in court.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 8:49 UTC (Sun)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (6 responses)
Amazon's one-click patent is a good example. The review took five years and the end result was that the patent was narrowed rather than rejected.
"Take 'em to court!" might be reasonable advice in some industries (pharma, automobile), but for tech firms and for low-budget software projects, the review process it too slow and too expensive, by orders of magnitude.
More info on this problem:
Posted Oct 3, 2010 13:56 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (5 responses)
Yes, it takes a long time to get a patent or to litigate one. Justice has never been quick, except when it's been bad.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 16:47 UTC (Sun)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (3 responses)
The only way to have justice is to exclude patents from domains where a significant amount of development/progress is performed by individuals, by projects with little or no direct financial interest in the software they produce, and by large numbers of low-cost SMEs.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 19:23 UTC (Sun)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:49 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
I suppose it depends on where you're standing. Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs probably think it doesn't work too badly (and I say this in full awareness of the ~$650 million judgement against Apple delivered today for infringement in the matter of their "CoverFlow" display in iTunes, etc.) I personally feel there are significant flaws in the systemmostly relating to a lack of expertise on the part of examiners in many cases, an overload of applications, and the term of protection being too long. I also feel that the courts need to adopt an ironclad principle that a plaintiff who brings an infringement case and loses must pay all of the costs, which would go a fair way toward leveling the playing field when it comes to litigating "bad" patents. I'm not prepared to throw the system out the window, myself. So, we agree that it "doesn't work", but I'm still interested in knowing what your thoughts are on fixing it. I think we all need to be aware that the reality is that patents are, in a way, like nuclear bombs: anyone who has 'em is not going to want to be the first volunteer to unilaterally "disarm" themselves.
Posted Oct 6, 2010 17:21 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
And while it can be unjust, I think our (the UK) system is better. Sometimes the winner ends up paying :-)
If the defendant offers to settle, and the plaintiff both (a) rejects the settlement, and (b) gets less at trial, then costs are AUTOMATICALLY awarded against the plaintiff! I think there's a bit of judicial leeway, but not much.
That way, especially in a troll case, if the defendant offers to settle for less than the plaintiff has already spent, it becomes a huge gamble for the plaintiff - swallow a loss or gamble on winning big with a massive downside if you don't ...
Cheers,
Posted Oct 8, 2010 10:46 UTC (Fri)
by Seegras (guest, #20463)
[Link]
Yes it is. The whole patent system cannot produce anything to prove it's usefulness in promotion of scientific development and innovation. It can't even prove its usefulness in providing inventors with compensation for their efforts.
It is, as a whole, a huge waste of money and resources, a weapon for corporate warfare whose only winner is lawyers, it's in effect a lawyers tax of 20% on every technology.
Patent systems are hurting the industry and economy big time. We, the world, the nations, the companies, cannot afford to maintain such a wealth-destroying, economy-crippling and innovation-stiffling machine.
Well, that is the economic reality. Of course, the media-generated virtual reality wildly differs from facts, and the politic reality follows thusly making it just about impossible to throw out the rent-seeking profiteers and actually ditch such a system. So, in that sense, any actual and feasible solutions are bound to be patchwork onto the existing patent system, but calling these a "solution" for the problem is like calling a duct-tape on the leak in the Titanic a "solution" -- it's still sinking, only marginally slower.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 18:29 UTC (Sun)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link] (6 responses)
Some of the problems with patents related discussions relate to lack of precision. I can guess what is meant but the arguments fielded do not work when complaining/appealing/petitioning authorities. It is a little like non-computer literate confuse Usenet News, the Internet and the Web as one and the same thing.
> Does anyone really believe that any of these patents describe anything beyond the ability of a smart junior high school student?
Obviousness (in the US) or lack of inventive step is unfortunately a complicated and misunderstood aspect. People complain stating "this patent is obvious!", the national/regional patent offices nod, agree, smile and refuse the opposition/invalidation process. Those complaining tend to be furious and confused. Eruptions in various fora ensues.
First of all the issue is not if it is obvious but if it WAS obvious at the time the application was filed. As a patent is required to be clear and sufficient, enabling a person skilled in the art to work the invention the result is that the disclosure SHOULD indeed in many cases enable a smart junior high school student.
If you instead show that the invention was obvious to a high school student before te filing of the application, which can be 5 or even 15 years ago, then you can kill the patent.
> It is not like any of these things are actual "inventions".
If you can get any application granted, lacking the requirements already in place, you simply have a fantastic career in front of you, believe me. I prosecute patent applications, some relating to software, and I can assure you that getting an application granted is very rarely trivial.
> Imagine if patents were available under the present day standards of the USPTO at $1 each.
There are numerous fees involved, typically filing, search and claims related, plus annuity fees, jurisdiction depending. These go to the national patent offices for the running of these, typically examination work. For 1 USD I guess you would have to dispose of novelty search and examination of patentability. That would most likely destroy the patent system.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:27 UTC (Mon)
by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)
[Link] (3 responses)
This is an interesting point regarding the longevity of patents. Why are we protecting ideas for 20 years that are, at best, obvious to the independent practitioner a year or two down the road?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:53 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:03 UTC (Tue)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link] (1 responses)
The purpose of the patent system is to promote advancement and one means towards that is the fact that a patent is published. The very act of publishing a patent (or patent application) that fulfulls the enabling requirements, clarity and sufficiency for a person skilled in the art to work the invention is what makes the invention obvious. If the invention is considered well known by everyone 10 years down the road then this can be taken as a sign of success.
The alternative is secrecy. There is very limited protection in a trade secret, on the other hand it can last forever and is cheap. And it can work surprisingly well. From my own experience I was involved in developing a new microprocessor architecture that was kept secret, not just how it works bit also where it is deployed. This is now close to 20 years ago and while the finished design documents made it seem obvious a recent search shows it has not yet been reinvented or published by others. Nor has the use been discovered by the competitors who do not realise the importance of the architecture in getting products quickly to the market.
This was my first experience seeing how clear things are in hindsight yet remains non-obvious at the time. Had a patent been applied for the competitors would probably have been using the technology already.
Publishing is one part of the deal made between the applicant and the authorities, getting a time limited protection is the other. If the time is too short more companies will find secrecy more attractive.
Posted Oct 7, 2010 13:24 UTC (Thu)
by stevem (subscriber, #1512)
[Link]
The patent system is fatally flawed, and has been ever since lawyers took control of it. Now the only people to profit are the lawyers.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:19 UTC (Tue)
by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
[Link]
"An abstraction layer for interfacing a computer to a telephony radio, comprising: a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for abstracting out multiple radio technologies without knowledge of the telephony radio or cellular network, wherein the set of APIs correspond to call control functions, wherein the abstraction layer comprises a proxy layer and a driver layer, wherein when the proxy layer receives a call at a first interface to one of the set of APIs, the proxy layer transforms the API call to a command understood by the driver layer and sends the command to the driver layer at a second interface, and wherein the driver layer receives the command at the second interface and determines at least one standard telephony radio command corresponding to the called API and sends the telephony radio command to the telephony radio at a third interface, and wherein the proxy layer is hardware independent and the driver is hardware specific."
The value of this so-called "invention" is directly proportional to its value to rule out the standard engineering practice of any and all competitors in the field. That is the main problem with most software patents, most don't cover anything rightly termed an "invention" at all.
Standard engineering practice is not an invention. This sort of thing (abstraction layers for interface conversion) goes back decades. Outside of software it goes back centuries. The only remotely "inventive" aspect of this claim is applying standard engineering practice to a mobile phone. The only conclusion one can make is that either the patent examiners are remarkably stupid or naive, or the standards of the USPTO are so lax as to be non-existent.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:26 UTC (Tue)
by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
[Link]
I think you are missing the point, which is that the only thing keeping the USPTO from destroying the economy now is the economic costs of obtaining a patent. Their standards are so low that if everyone entitled to a patent under current standards was granted one at a sufficiently minimal cost, all creative enterprise would stop.
It is not too far beyond the pale of reason to trace one of the major causes of the current recession in the United States to the practices of the USPTO over the past decade. The USPTO is a black hole contributing to a net loss of health, wealth, and prosperity in the country, and the software division more than most.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 7:27 UTC (Sat)
by bawjaws (guest, #56952)
[Link] (118 responses)
At first I thought the plan was to make patents seem like such an existential threat to FLOSS that corporations would have to campaign to ban them completely to maintain credibility, rather than just try to dodge individual patent threats, but now I'm not so sure.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 8:15 UTC (Sat)
by danielpf (guest, #4723)
[Link]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 10:21 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (69 responses)
There's no strategy of the kind you describe. There's a realization of the unfortunately inalterable reality of software patents surrounding us. On that basis, I stopped four years (minus one month) ago any efforts aiming at the abolition of software patents and announced at the time that I wasn't going to try again. The NoSoftwarePatents cause has too little support from businesses. I explained in this recent LWN comment what it would take to convince politicians of abolition. So contrary to what some people sometimes allege, I don't just criticize but actually say what would be required. I'd also like to see the Defensive Patent License (whenever it's done) to have such a strong following that it becomes a meaningful statement by businesses. It wouldn't change the political situation overnight, but it could be very helpful because a lot of IT companies saying they don't want to be left alone in terms of patents (even if they own some) would say something. Since abolition won't happen anytime soon, neither in the courts (the Supreme Court made it clear that only Congress can restrict the scope of patent-eligible subject matter) nor in political decision-making bodies, my focus is on how best to deal with the situation. In the TurboHercules case, I'm confident that the ongoing antitrust investigation will result in a license deal that will, as a side effect, also prevent IBM from using patents for exclusionary strategic purposes. Exclusionary strategic use is the real problem, and in some cases antitrust intervention can provide a remedy. In the Android context, I believe that Google -- a decidedly pro-patent company that owes its success to patent protection -- has to take care of the entire ecosystem and solve the patent situation through negotiations with those right holders. My primary concern in the Android context is inhowfar this mess can hurt app developers. When I say "Android context", that inclues WebM, where I have similar concerns. Google exposes others to massive risk. If things go well, Google wins; if things don't, others bear the brunt. That's not fair. What I furthermore try to do is counter some of the propaganda and expose some of the hypocrisy that's out there. I see organizations who lobbied for software patents, or people who seek to profiteer from those patents, leveraging the anti-software-patent sentiment for their purposes in ways that are transparent to me (because I've spent a lot of time in this field) but not to all others. I see with concern some people's allegiance to companies like IBM who fund them (IBM is the worst and biggest of its kind, but not the only one), combined with many people's paranoia concerning Microsoft, an obsession that prevents many from seeing the real issues and identifying possible solutions. There's no point in following IBM stooges who talk about Microsoft all the time to distract from the real issues as well as from possible solutions. I want to counterbalance that hypocrisy, also in the "open standards" context. It's an insult to human intelligence that IBM (keeping the mainframe legacy business totally closed), Oracle (look at the Java Community Process etc.) and Google promote openness. Lastly, I do advocate a more realistic interpretation of "free software" that should include patent licensing deals as a cost of doing business rather than an attack on freedom itself. No constitution guarantees the freedom of software, but intellectual property is guaranteed by all constitutions in the civilized world.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 12:14 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (13 responses)
[citation needed]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 12:21 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (12 responses)
In terms of citation, you won't find anything that shows Google ever spoke out against the patentability of software in general. Some overinterpreted Google's amicus curiae brief in the Bilski case, but I analyzed it thoroughly and it clearly comes down on the pro-patent rather than anti-patent side. I've dealt with substantive patent law (the rules for what is and whas isn't patent-eligible) enough to tell an anti-software-patent from a pro-software-patent position when I read it. Google didn't speak out against software patents in the legislative process we had in the EU until July 2005. All they truly cared about was an interoperability privilege to ensure they could still index PDF files etc. In terms of Google's success owing to patent protection, I'm convinced that this is the case and I know from someone who talked to one of Google's founders that they considered their patents -- especially the PageRank patent -- indispensable. Just imagine what would have happened if its then much larger competitors such as Yahoo and AltaVista, let alone Microsoft, AOL or others, had been able to implement the PageRank approach right away as soon as it started to work well for Google...
Posted Oct 2, 2010 12:43 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 12:46 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 13:06 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (8 responses)
in addition, there's more to google's search engine than just the pagerang algorithm.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 13:09 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:18 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Microsoft successfully developed a decent rival product (Bing) without licensing PageRank. And so far we haven't heard about Google making patent threats.
Even your examples just show that Google doesn't really _care_ about patents.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:43 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Posted Oct 3, 2010 18:48 UTC (Sun)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link] (3 responses)
> Even Google says that PageRank is only a part of the equation.
Today it probably is. The question is more what it was like in the beginning, back in the day when SEO did not equate making sure you appear in searches on Google.
There are typically 3 reasons why people apply for a patent
Google is dominating the search engine market, it is quite possible they do not feel the need to apply for patents as much as they once did. A quick look suggests they have applied for fewer international applications since the peak in 2008. Quite a few of those I find relate to advertising, very little relating to searching.
> Microsoft successfully developed a decent rival product (Bing) without licensing PageRank.
Is their algorithm known?
Posted Oct 3, 2010 22:07 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
I don't think PageRank held for more than a couple of years before becoming a target for black SEO and thus becoming only a small part of the whole system.
>> Microsoft successfully developed a decent rival product (Bing) without licensing PageRank.
Of course, no. But it surely adds boost in search result pages based on number of incoming links.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:08 UTC (Tue)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link]
>>Is their algorithm known?
>Of course, no. But it surely adds boost in search result pages based on number of incoming links.
So how do you know?
Since you write "surely" I hope you can also tell me if the Microsoft implementation was based on the disclosure in the Google PageRank patent.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 14:07 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
I don't think it can be possible or would be expected to show that you are not stepping on other patents. [depends on your product, but we'll assume sw pats would be in play and we are talking about that industry]. Also, a major rise in sw pats occurred this decade, so if you started off in the 90s or earlier, you might have landed in an area to have avoided (for a while anyway) most problems.
Obviously some industries might not likely have so many relevant patents in your area.
>> - for startup, making sure you are not killed off by large existing players
It's not likely you can avoid infringement today in many sw (or similar) areas (again, assuming sw pats were in play), so companies can definitely come and pressure you to pay some big bucks or sell out or in fact be driven out of business. These have all happened enough times that it's probably safe to say you cannot add surety at all.
>> - for cross licensing purposes, typically used by those making a living from their IPR portfolio
Again, looking at these areas where we might presume many patents in effect, if you focus on creating patents and not products, then you could try to make money off the patents, but if you make products, there is a very good chance you infringe somewhere. Those cross-licensing, I think by definition, are making products.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:03 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
This whole thread actually shows rather nicely why software patents are not a necessary thing: there is far more to it when it comes to success/failure of a business. Both "sides" of the discussion essentially agree with this.
Then why complicate lives of so many to gain essentially nothing for general public? Because once the privilege is given, it is hard to take it away. Nobody in their right mind is going to give up on a potential monopoly when they can squeeze their competitors for longer without doing anything else business-wise to be more successful.
Unrelated point:
I remember discussion from awhile back about software being like artwork. Anyone still remembers that Google ad where the solution to a mathematical problem led to a phone number to call (or something like that - don't remember the details exactly)? How many "artists" would get that?
I am sure Google had that ad up because software had nothing to do with maths :-)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 2:53 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
I'm guessing only, but I would think competitors would be able to connect the dots reasonably quick.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 15:04 UTC (Sat)
by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
[Link] (1 responses)
You might be right that patent abolition will not happen anytime soon. Even then, we still should push for abolition as much as possible, for several reasons. The first one is embedded in the very sentence you wrote... Anytime soon. Compare today's society with what we had 100 or 200 years ago, and see how much changed. A strong push for patent abolition today might result in patent abolition, or at least weakening, 50 years down the line. The second one is that strong calls for abolition present an opposing force to calls for patent expansion. Even if it does not result on abolition or even weakening of patents, if it prevents or even reduces expansion of patents, it is still a win. The third one is that not all countries have software patents. Not only that, on some countries software is explicitly excluded as a patentable subject. A strong push for patent abolition, especially if focused on abolition of software patents, helps prevent the law on these countries being changed to allow software patents. Which is important because you never know which countries will be important 50 years down the line. The fourth one is that it results in less aggressive enforcement. If enough people are anti-patent, the most egregious attempts at enforcement of patents will be avoided, so as to not provide good examples for the anti-patent crowd. Of course, nothing in this prevents the development of ways to reduce the negative effect of software patents in countries which allow them. Both workarounds and calls for abolition can be pursued at the same time.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 15:08 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
It's just that we can't all focus equally well on everything at the same time, so I have my focus at this stage (after having done a huge amount of work on the substantive patent law side) and I have the impression that many people's preference for abolition prevents them from reognizing the value in the things I advocate in the short term. By "many people" I don't mean you because you've made a very logical, crystal clear distinction.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 17:33 UTC (Sat)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (18 responses)
I don't share your hopelessness regarding abolition, for various reasons. One is that we came close to winning in the EU. We're fighting now in Australia and New Zealand and while I can't say they'll be easy wins, they're far, far from hopeless. Israel and India are also possible but I don't have a complete picture of what's happening in either place. Another is that contexts change and victory takes many elements. One (essential) element is business support. We're currently not succeeding in getting enough of that. If we might get it in the future, we should work now on having all the other elements in place. When we get the missing piece, we have to be ready to go. And the more I think about your TRIPS worries, the more I think you're reaching a wrong conclusion by focussing too much on the words in the treaty and ignoring the context in which the treaty lives. Just look at the EPC and the "as such" nonsense. If treaties were interpreted the way you think they are, there would be no swpats in Europe. Treaties are interpreted with flexibility, including multilateral treaties, to avoid outcomes which either party would find undesirable (which is needed so that all parties agree to keep the treaties and keep signing new ones). In France, frogs are legally classified as fish. The legislator doesn't care what's on the business cards of fishermen or frog farmers, and the population (and the legislators who come from the population) doesn't have to believe that frogs are fish, it's just legal categorisation for the law to have sane effects.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 17:45 UTC (Sat)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (17 responses)
Concerning some other countries you mentioned, Israel is very patent-oriented as I'm sure you'll find out once you do some research on the market. India so far doesn't do what China does -- US-style patents -- but as a result, Chinese companies are much more active in patenting outside China (in markets such as the US and Europe) than their Indian counterparts. So the Indian government faces a competitiveness problem for its own economy.
In terms of the European Patent Convention being interpreted, the problem with software being excluded only "as such" is a problem because it's about substantive law, not about an enforcement exclusion. In substantive law, if something must be patentable in one field, the patent then affects all; in enforcement, that could be handled more flexibly, but enforcement exceptions are generally not wanted in patent law.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:03 UTC (Sat)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (16 responses)
---linuxrocks123
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:14 UTC (Sat)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Oct 3, 2010 4:27 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (8 responses)
No. By the way, my blog links to Ciarán's EndSoftPatents campaign and to the NoSoftwarePatents campaign which I founded and used to run. I also posted comments in discussions, such as on slashdot, in which I said that the idea of EndSoftPatents is right. I don't do anything to adversely affect resistance; I do, however, discuss very openly and honestly why that resistance is politically futile for the foreseeable future (lack of support from businesses). This includes a clear description of the kind of resistance that would be needed to bring about change.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:57 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (7 responses)
People in large numbers can certainly affect the law and the markets. What we need now is for some of those people who signed to get more active and try to spread the message further.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:28 UTC (Mon)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:55 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:22 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Posted Oct 5, 2010 1:51 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (3 responses)
In fact, aren't you here partially to function as an "expert" that has our best interests in mind?
Posted Oct 5, 2010 4:14 UTC (Tue)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (2 responses)
That's not how it works. We've leveraged that kind of resistance, and all we were able to achieve on that basis was a defensive victory (we prevented a new law from being passed), but once you really want to go on the offensive and get a law passed that's more restrictive than what's already there, it just won't work. Also, politicians won't just vote on a subject like this based on trusting and liking "experts" making a case for ordinary citizens. Theoretically, each member of a parliament is free to vote, but in reality, there's a process that results in a party line followed by most of them, or even all of them. If a matter of economic policy, such as patent law, is discussed within political parties, there's absolutely no way to win (except within smaller parties) unless you demonstrate meaningful support from businesses.
Posted Oct 6, 2010 3:26 UTC (Wed)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (1 responses)
---linuxrocks123
Posted Oct 6, 2010 4:00 UTC (Wed)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
But there are other circumstances for which the anti-software-patent stance has an even harder time in the US. For instance, if you look at how all patent reform initiatives in recent years have gone, you can see that the subcommittee members in charge are totally pro-patent, much more so than, say, the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, where a majority is pro-patent but a much larger minority than in comparable Congress committees is receptive to some form of criticism.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 4:22 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (5 responses)
No, that's not the reason, and you, linuxrocks123, even though I agree with some of your objectives and general views, repeatedly say things that show you aren't too well informed of some of the issues. The lawmaking process was concluded in practical terms months ago and there was never a risk of the law itself changing. The problem is that the law is ambiguous concerning software patentability and that New Zealand's patent office is now going to define guidelines for how to interpret and apply it. More details here.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 10:09 UTC (Sun)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (4 responses)
By the way, even though I disagree with your comments here and do not believe they are productive, I don't mean to attack you personally, and I would like to thank you for all the great work you did attacking software patents in Europe.
Oh, and, this is slightly off-topic, but does anyone here know anything about what Kagan thinks about software patents? It will probably prove important.
---linuxrocks123
Posted Oct 3, 2010 11:50 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (3 responses)
I challenged you in another recent LWN discussion to document this cliam of Bilski being a win for anti-software-patent purposes. I didn't see any credible expert say so. I know enough about substantive patent law myself that when I read the ruling, I can see it favors an expansive patent system, not a restrictive approach. You claimed Wikipedia was on your side, but when I asked you which statement on Wikipedia disagreed with which statement of mine, I didn't get a reply. You believe you've identified contradictory positions of mine where you actually haven't. The institutional framework in the US and NZ is roughly the same: parliament (Congress) makes the law; the patent offices applies it; the patent office's decisions can be reviewed by the judges and ultimately the patent office has to work according to the courts' interpretations; if lawmakers aren't happy with the decisions taken by the judges, they have to change the law. The fundamental difference is that 35 U.S.C. §101 doesn't exclude software from patent-eligible subject matter while New Zealand's parliament passed a law that does so but in a very ambiguous way. Instead of explaining all the details of that again, I refer to this blog posting of mine on the New Zealand situation. That posting said that now it's key how the patent office will resolve the ambiguity of the law, and even the patent office doesn't have the last word but we may have to wait several years before we see what the judges make of it. The problem with claiming victory over software patents is that those are very resilient. You haven't won till the patent offices stop granting them and the judges stop upholding them. As long as there's any loophole allowing them, you've lost, even if you've closed several other loopholes. The New Zealand law says that software is not patentable but embedded software is, citing specifically smartphone operating software. As my aforementioned blog posting explains, this doesn't look like an exclusion of software patents. If the law said that no software publisher or developer can ever be liable for patent infringement, that would be clear, but when the question is what can be patented, then I'm skeptical. At any rate, thanks for your kind words about my work on the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign. And concerning Kagan, I don't have an answer but I doubt that the Supreme Court will hear any case involving 35 U.S.C. § 101 anytime soon. I guess the focus will now shift to patent quality issues such as disclosure.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 21:30 UTC (Sun)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (2 responses)
Regarding Bilski, I got tired of debating you. However, if I recall correctly, the text you quoted was all part of a non-controlling section of the opinion and so is not law. Moreover, a footnote in the same section said that the laundry list of new technology fields quoted was not meant to suggest that any one of those fields did or did not satisfy subject matter eligibility requirements. Since the decision overruled the Federal Circuit's horrendous State Street decision, we're left with Benson, Flook, and Diehr. The only one of these we don't like is Diehr, and that is for an actual machine that cures rubber and happens to use software to do it, so, without the nastiness of State Street to aggravate it, I don't feel it's too bad.
In Bilski, the Supreme Court punted. You say this means we need to go to Congress. I say it means we need to go to the Patent Office and lower courts and go to the Supreme Court again with a case that forces them to decide the issue (at a time when we think we'll win based on the composition of the court -- the departure of Stevens is truly a shame unless Kagan is on our side as well). We should also support Microsoft's effort to lower the burden of proof standard in i4i.
---linuxrocks123
Posted Oct 3, 2010 21:33 UTC (Sun)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link] (1 responses)
---linuxrocks123
Posted Oct 4, 2010 1:04 UTC (Mon)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:03 UTC (Sat)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (6 responses)
The Court has very clearly ruled algorithms with obvious post-solution activity not to be patentable.
The Court affirmed that the machine or transformation is a very good test and has yet to conceive of a patent that violates that, despite there being hundreds of thousands of what can be labelled "software patents", many or all (depending on how you define a software patent) of which would violate that test. Surely, many classes of software patents (eg, as used on existing programmable devices to process (abstraction) and view (trivial) information) are abstract just like the Bilski patents.
Did you read over some of those Microsoft patent claims? I have yet to read anything by them that was not shamefully abstract.
The Court also hasn't yet responded to numerous types of Constitutional challenges. For example, granting 20 years for passing the very low bar of "non-obvious" to a person having ordinary skill in the art is a sure way to stifle progress (especially when many inventors would be hand-cuffed and/or marginal manufacturing costs would be fairly low), which would make our current patent law (or at least restricted to the more dubious types of patents) void.
The Court is the one that decides on constitutionality. They have not declared otherwise.
[No, the SCOTUS can't possibly be saying that Congress can interpret the law (esp. the Constitution) as they wish. Congress is not bestowed with that right and the Courts can't give it to them without making a mockery of their interpretation of the Constitution. If something does not promote the progress or does violate Free Speech, then it is a problem law to be stricken down in time.]
As long as the Constitution stands, the SCOTUS is in line to rule on promoting the progress and freedom of expression, no matter what Congress wants. Software patents violate freedom of expression, and the Eldrich case made it clear that ideas are too broad to grant anyone exclusive access (within the context of the First Amendment rights, applied in the specific case to copyrights.. which, btw, are neutered by software patents that don't even recognize fair use or independent re-invention in violation of the First Amendment).
As an aside, the more people that write to their representatives arguing these points and how harmful are software patents, the more difficult it is for them to ignore us. The more users switch to Linux and to open source and have it explained to them that companies filing software patents want to take away $0 software from them and competitive pricing, the more these people are also likely to write to their government representatives. The more people have an easy way to express themselves to their reps (eg, by writing an easy letter from "your" website), the more people will exercise their power of influence. The more people see the harms and abuses of monopolies and of large corps getting their way (eg, abusing small open source firms), the more they will want to take action.
BTW, I think IBM was against Turbo Hercules pushing Microsoft operating systems into the relevant markets. They stated that much. And as a notable, TH could not have integrated with Microsoft OS using third party GPL code.
To break Microsoft monopolies and pour some water on their hyper-ambitions and power grabs (for the sake on consumers and competition), it's important to reject their closed platforms from which they control the quality of all software and services and have tremendous access to user's data "behind the scenes". It was very easy for me to switch to an open platform and millions others have done it as well. To conveniently accept that status quo, (as you do with Microsoft, proprietary software, and software patents) is to be an agent of those that gain from such acceptance. To deny placing blame where it is due and while attacking the threats to them, is to support those entities.
>> It's an insult to human intelligence that IBM (keeping the mainframe legacy business totally closed), Oracle (look at the Java Community Process etc.) and Google promote openness.
As you typically do, you left out explicitly calling out Microsoft for claiming they support openness. You also aren't calling them out for them being particularly aggressive against Linux and real open platforms that allow users to preserve their privacy, control, and fair playing field.
>> No constitution guarantees the freedom of software, but intellectual property is guaranteed by all constitutions in the civilized world.
The US Constitution does intend that freedom of expression be guaranteed and that only undesirable anti free market monopolies be granted under limited circumstances, including that these would promote that freedom as well as progress.
Software patents do neither, yet you want us to give up actual freedom so that these patent holders can have more money, control, and take away our intellectual property creations over which many have worked very hard and intend to share with the world?
You value wealthy, anti-social, power mongers that bought out or created something that according to the faulty USPTO was possibly no more than "non-obvious" to a person having ordinary skill in the art?
You support Microsoft's illegal abstract patents? You support their monopolies? You make it a point to defend them in your sentences while calling out a list of others and omitting a reference to them?
And you expect to have credibility as someone that has the interests of most consumers or market competitors?
Posted Oct 3, 2010 4:19 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (5 responses)
You've made a long posting, hozelda, that states an unbelievably large number of wrong things, some of them so wrong that I was sitting there shaking my head while reading -- not simply because of disagreement but because it's astounding how some people throw around with so much nonsense. I attribute that in no small part to an emotional and ideological attitude. You don't make enough of a distinction between your extreme views and actual reality. And you don't evem to research things well before making aggressive statements about them. It would take too long to debunk every single wrong thing you say, but let me address a very few. "Abstract" in a patent law sense is certainly not how you define the term. The Bilski ruling in terms of the majority position didn't change anything about post-solution activity. You can look at the dissenting opinions and try to conclude something from them, which is kind of speculative because it's the actual decision that really matters. I didn't say (or imply) that Congress can interpret the Constitution as it wishes. But the Constitution itself says that Congress can grant "exclusive rights" of the kind nowadays referred to as IPRs. Just comparing what you say about the Constitution and Congress in this context to what the Constitution actually says (see the link I just provided) should be enough of an indication to many reasonable people that one can't take your baseless rants seriously. If you believe IBM's statements concerning the TurboHercules antitrust issue, you might as well have believed the Iraqi Information Minister in 2003. Similar degree of accuracy. TurboHercules' software is the Hercules open source mainframe emulator. It's been developed originally for Linux; a Windows version is also available, just like for MySQL, Apache, Firefox, OpenOffice etc. IBM threatened TH with patents that have nothing to do with Windows. IBM refused to enter into operating system licensing negotiations that were unrelated to whether Hercules would run on Windows or Linux. What you say about the GPL shows you neither understand the GPL nor the Hercules software. There's no copyleft impact on software you emulate or virtualize with a GPL'd emulator/virtualizer. There's also nothing that Hercules does in its Windows version that would be any different from a GPL point of view than what its Linux version does. What you call "a notable" is yet another absurdity. It's pointless to argue with someone like you. The combination of al the things you say looks like you may be GroklXX-brainwashed. No matter what the reason for your absurdities is, I just wanted to show to reasonable readers that your comments on this kind of matters can't be taken seriously at all. Not in the slightest.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 3:43 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (4 responses)
Alright, you can skip out on addressing all the other stuff, but you aren't convincing many people simply by saying it's wrong without more discussion.. and judging by your comments here, you certainly don't seem to be short of ink or time to address issues. At your discretion don't address my points.
>> "Abstract" in a patent law sense is certainly not how you define the term.
You say this, but then you provide nothing of substance. That's not very convincing.
Fact is that if being "abstract" was obvious, the Court could have given more examples and the USPTO would not have sent out their S.O.S they just did asking for opinions on judging patents applications that should be granted patents or not based on the Bilski ruling (where the main point of unanimous agreement was that the Bilski patent was "abstract").
Can you point to me where the term is defined by the Courts or Congress?
Bilski was ruled abstract 9-0, yet I'm sure the lawyers representing Bilski would argue it should have gone their way.
Algorithms are abstract.
Their meaning of "abstract" is not cut and dry. It's not like mathematics. It's not like software, where there would be little ambiguity over what code represents were we willing to trace the steps for a particular run.
"Abstract" can be defined in many ways based on context, but look at Diehr to see that the software steps there were not patentable but the overall process (an industrial process) was as the claim was on changing the form of matter.
Can you give an example of a software patent where the SCOTUS said, that is a great patent that applies to general purpose computing devices despite no transformation taking place?
And simply saying my usage of that term is wrong but providing no examples is not very convincing and makes it look to me like you don't really know what abstract means or how to convincingly show my statements make no or little sense (as you assume is the case).
BTW, I expect I have a greater standard for overcoming abstract than the Courts, but it would help if you point out where/how. There is much not defined precisely and different parties and individuals draw different lines.
>> The Bilski ruling in terms of the majority position didn't change anything about post-solution activity. You can look at the dissenting opinions and try to conclude something from them, which is kind of speculative because it's the actual decision that really matters.
Well, most of what I mentioned was reinforced in the majority opinion; however, the majority opinion did not say very much at all about software specifically.
So which part of what I said do you think is not part of a majority. There might be some, but let's focus on that and I can back off it perhaps.
The majority had references to Benson, Flook, and Diehr along the lines of what I covered.
I don't remember saying that Bilski changed the "post-solution activity" interpretation (and it appears you are claiming I did). They did at least add another example of what is an abstract patent.
That the USPTO grants many bad patents doesn't mean the Court would agree with them. There is a risk in appealing to the SCOTUS and most patent threats get settled much earlier than that.
>> But the Constitution itself says that Congress can grant "exclusive rights" of the kind nowadays referred to as IPRs.
See next.
>> Just comparing what you say about the Constitution and Congress in this context to what the Constitution actually says (see the link I just provided) should be enough of an indication to many reasonable people that one can't take your baseless rants seriously.
OK, so I follow your link since you are a person of such few words and this is what I find:
"Its power is limited with regard both to subject matter and to the purpose and duration of the rights granted. Only the writings and discoveries of authors and inventors may be protected, and then only to the end of promoting science and the useful arts."
There is more stuff, but I am having a lot of trouble seeing what part of what I said is it that you see as "baseless rants" and why? Can you provide another link that will speak for you a little better?
Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 219-20 (2003)"
Note that "software patents" pre-empt original creations and expressions through software. Patent law was not designed to apply to information used by many, eg, for expression (that's not what a machine or process patent are, eg). All software running on a computer is but a manipulation of an abstraction (digital model), of information, then the device/computer shows it on screen (obvious post-solution activity). Patent claims (one-sentence each) cover very broad ideas that don't anticipate a very very large amount of the details in an actual implementation.
OK, getting back to that link you provided http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art1frag71_user.html , I'll quote one more piece:
"The concept of originality is central to copyright, and it is a constitutional requirement Congress may not exceed."
Patent law does not trump the First Amendment to the Constitution. It makes no sense to assume the Court would allow patents to walk all over originality (ignoring any further analysis, for the moment) protected by First Amendment when they rule that Copyright law cannot.
>> If you believe IBM's statements concerning the TurboHercules antitrust issue, you might as well have believed the Iraqi Information Minister in 2003. Similar degree of accuracy.
What they say, to which I was referring, is clear and believable: the software TH was pushing did not have licenses, and that software included Microsoft platform software.
What I think about IBM and patents in general or suspect about them is not important. They stated they rejected a product that had Microsoft closed platform software with it. TH was not pushing THsoftware on Linux.
If you have evidence otherwise, then show me the letter where TH does push Linux and no proprietary MS platform software and then the corresponding IBM reply.
>> IBM threatened TH with patents that have nothing to do with Windows. IBM refused to enter into operating system licensing negotiations that were unrelated to whether Hercules would run on Windows or Linux.
Well, I don't have a copy and looked at this quickly only then, but I will adjust my position if you show me the letters and how IBM was not rejecting a product bundled with MS software but was rejecting generally the TH totally open source software.
>> There's also nothing that Hercules does in its Windows version that would be any different from a GPL point of view than what its Linux version does.
TH said they had special integration with Windows and that is what I mentioned and am basing that GPL remark on. [Update, I don't have all my notes and files with me easily accessible, so from memory I went to TH site and looked at what they had to day about their turnkey solution. I found a link that goes to a different website but found nothing like what I remember they had. Go here http://www.turbohercules.com/solutions/ and click on the left column link mentioning "MVS Turnkey System" to see what I mean. It looks to me like they have changed their website around since that time.]
>> The combination of al the things you say looks like you may be GroklXX-brainwashed.
Groklaw is fairly well respected by many folks here. FWIW, I don't think I quoted groklaw at all. I did reference some SCOTUS comments and that link you provided.
>> No matter what the reason for your absurdities is, I just wanted to show to reasonable readers
I'm not sure how not answering me directly in most cases is a solid way to convince a reasonable reader.
It would help your case, if you went back and picked just a handful of the many "absurdities" I mentioned and then easily showed what a fool I was.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:40 UTC (Mon)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (3 responses)
I'll get back to at least some of the points you made.
Concerning TurboHercules and Linux, on their website they have offerings and there's also a Linux version. TurboHercules' letter to IBM was platform-neutral. Also, I didn't see IBM make a Linux/Windows distinction in its response. The patents IBM listed would either be infringed (if there is indeed an infringement, which is another question) by the Linux version or by neither version of the Hercules software.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 2:05 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (2 responses)
BTW, I followed a link I think may have been the one I mentioned (describing Microsoft integration) http://www.turbohercules.com/solutions/turnkey_product/ and as you can see, it is a page with the main contents removed. If I have a copy of it from before I would have to dig for it (and it probably won't be for this thread).
Posted Oct 5, 2010 4:19 UTC (Tue)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (1 responses)
There's no "Windows integration" going beyond the fact that the emulator, originally developed for Linux, is available for Windows. So what's wrong with that? Are you basically saying that free and open source software can be attacked in any way just because there's a Windows version? How about Apache, MySQL, Firefox etc.? Are they fair game because there are Windows versions? Or do you mean to say their Windows versions are fair game for any kind of attack (or for a denial of what antitrust law requires)? You could have easily googled those letters. At any rate, here's a link and there's no mention of Windows.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 14:43 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
Yes, I could have googled and didn't. I wanted to mention the TH thing, but that event is in the past and was mostly off topic. Since their page appears to have changed, it's not too useful to me right now to go further into it (I'm not a fan of IBM's patent policy, though it does appear to be friendlier to Linux today (and IBM does leverage the Linux community much more than does Microsoft, so that much would make sense).
The most I can say for IBM in terms of excuse is that they repeated their pledge (for what it's worth, since obviously they have many more patents off the pledge and which obviously might apply). I do know that the groklaw articles had mentioned there might have been some inconsistency in who had taken what action by what point in time and that the letters might not have shown the whole picture. In any case, we all gain in these respects without sw pats.
My personal view is that I care about open source being safe and do not worry about closed source. This means I would be happy if open source was safe regardless of the closed source situation (open source provides all the blueprints and this is very developer/end-user/progress friendly, especially in the long run); however, I can understand the closed source folks also feeling frustrated with sw pats.
Specific to Microsoft, they are a monopolist of an important segment (desktop OS) and very ambitious (they would easily take over google's market share and then some if given the opportunity). I don't support that. I don't port to Windows. I want the high-value FOSS products to exist on open platforms, preferably exclusively. On proprietary platforms, FOSS apps are completely dependent on the underlying OS so are not FOSS as a piece of software actually running on the system. When Microsoft leaves their position in the market clearly, I won't be so negative, at least not towards them with bias.
I would like Google to spread Linux, but I personally am not interested in their OS product and would recommend people switch off it as Google adds proprietary components and lock-in (ie, in the future).
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:55 UTC (Sat)
by kripkenstein (guest, #43281)
[Link] (2 responses)
Or, Motorola could just join OIN, couldn't it? I presume Microsoft can't attack OIN directly?
Posted Oct 3, 2010 4:33 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
Some people voice similar wrong things in aggressive, sometimes even insulting ways. You did the right thing by just asking, and I'm happy to clarify: You can read about the OIN's purposes here. The OIN itself has no products, so it can't be sued for infringement. But if Motorola turned its Droid products over to the OIN, then the OIN would have products and could be sued. A mere OIN membership of Motorola wouldn't change anything for Microsoft's patent infringement claims. The OIN would grant to Motorola a license to some patents. Those patents, however, aren't Microsoft patents. So if Motorola infringes Microsoft patents, it doesn't matter that someone else licenses some other patents to Motorola. The OIN isn't strong enough to force Microsoft into a contractual arrangement according to which Microsoft would license all of its patents to all OIN members. Finally, you said "join OIN", and there are two different types of joining that organization. All of what I said before applies to both of them. There are six full members and one associate member (Canonical is the latter), and there are roughly 150 licensees. Members have more rights; licensees are in a pretty weak position. But even if Motorola became a member (not just a licensee), everything I said above would apply and the lawsuit would continue without any change.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:49 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Posted Oct 3, 2010 1:04 UTC (Sun)
by anonymous1 (guest, #41963)
[Link] (7 responses)
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
"IP" is specifically not guaranteed by US constitution, a limited monopoly is granted only if it serves the public interest. If we assume that monopolies do not serve the public interest, then there is no constitutional basis in US for them to exist.
I suggest reading
Posted Oct 3, 2010 2:53 UTC (Sun)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (6 responses)
Ergo, the statement "intellectual property is guaranteed by all constitutions in the civilized world" is completely false, unless perhaps one doesn't consider the United States to be part of the civilized world.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 4:58 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Oct 3, 2010 7:35 UTC (Sun)
by anonymous1 (guest, #41963)
[Link] (4 responses)
An example of guarantee is the First Amendment
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Notice the absence of purpose
now *that* is a guarantee.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 7:39 UTC (Sun)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (3 responses)
Concerning "for limited Times", that's obvious. Copyright has always been time-limited; patents have always been; etc. That was the case before the Constitution entered into force, and it has been the case since.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 16:40 UTC (Sun)
by anonymous1 (guest, #41963)
[Link] (1 responses)
As for limited times, that is a joke, none of the culture/arts/software created today will lose copyright in my lifetime.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 20:46 UTC (Mon)
by jhhaller (guest, #56103)
[Link]
Posted Oct 6, 2010 18:13 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
You obviously don't know your history ... There's a reason "limited time" was put into the American Constitution - it was the reaction to perpetual copyright (or its equivalent) in Britain. I assume British law applied in the colonies ... ? Cheers,
Posted Oct 4, 2010 2:51 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
There will be no significant movement on any of those monopolistic practices until general public become convinced that they are getting ripped off. Unfortunately the poetic picture of a lone inventor helping humanity is entrenched in general public's mind, so they keep believing there can be no other way to facilitate progress.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 21:16 UTC (Mon)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (9 responses)
Ah. Thank you for finally becoming clear. You advocate capitulation. Accept the status quo. There's nothing that can be done. Give up. Don't argue with the current state of things. Don't try and advocate for change. There's no point. You can't win..
Or in the wonderful words of John Carpenter's "They Live".
OBEY
Sorry Florian but you are *NOT* a Free Software advocate, no matter how much you might claim to be one in your blog and in your postings here. What you seem to be arguing for is the ability use the patent system to control Free Software, probably worldwide and not just in countries that accept software patents.
I ask again, who are the companies you are consulting for ? Who pays your wages ? (BTW. Google pays mine in case anyone wonders).
Jeremy.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 0:21 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (7 responses)
You advocate capitulation. As far as I can tellnot to put words in his mouthwhat Florian seems to be advocating is "dealing with reality" rather than "wishing the world were some entirely different place" or, if you prefer, "sensible engagement" versus "neurotic fantasizing". Sorry Florian but you are *NOT* a Free Software advocate, no matter how much you might claim to be one in your blog and in your postings here. I don't believe that's a determination you get to make, actually. If folks who say stuff like this spent half the energy doing something concrete to improve things that bother them as they do working out who is and isn't a real "free software advocate", they might actually accomplish something worthwhile. Just out of curiosity, what exactly are you doing to "change the status quo", to see that "free software" is never tainted by "diseased" patents, or whatever it is that you're after here? Other than posting aggrieved and petulant comments, I mean. Google pays mine in case anyone wonders Really? Golly. Perhaps, since you're all about advocating free software and all, you could get them to liberate all those neat kernel performance patches they've been keeping to themselves all these years. Isn't it all about sharing?
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:44 UTC (Tue)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (1 responses)
Yes Lefty, it is. Advocating *for* software patents, which is what both you and Florian do, is incompatible with advocacy for Free Software. So Florian's statements do disqualify him as a Free Software advocate (which is what he claims to be). I don't say the same about you, as no one in their wildest dreams would insult you by calling you an advocate for Free Software. I do wonder what it is you actually try and achieve by your comments both here and on the Gnome lists though ? You dislike Free Software so much, why do you spend so much time arguing with its supporters and trying to get them to accept a patent tax on their own work ? Might it be because you'd like to use it in your own proprietary software ?
I think you might need to go get some patents of your own to achieve that :-). It's the only sure way it seems :-).
> Really? Golly. Perhaps, since you're all about advocating free software
Lefty, Google conspiracy theories are *so* twentieth century. You might want to replace your tinfoil hat, it seems the mind control rays must be seeping through your existing one.
Jeremy.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:11 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Yes Lefty, it is. Well, we'll simply have to agree to disagree on that. Advocating *for* software patents, which is what both you and Florian do, is incompatible with advocacy for Free Software. See, you've completely confused "advocating for software patents" with "recognizing the legal reality that there are indeed patents out there, related to software, which courts are quite likely to hold to be perfectly good ones if they should happen to be asked about it by anyone". They're not the same thing, though I can see how one might confuse the two. Sort of. Apparently "advocating against software patents" amounts to "pretending they don't exist" in your thinking. Ignoring reality, especially in the context of brushes with the legal system, has proven to be a risky strategy. In my opinion, Florian can call himself a "free software advocate" if he advocates in favor of free software licenses (as opposed to open source ones) and, I suppose, at least some "free software" positions. I would certainly hope that he's free to make suggestionsas he hasexpressing his views of things that would constitute improvements, in his opinion, and based on his expertise. You, howeverand you're far from alone in thisseem to want to insist on a completely homogenous and undifferentiated groupthink, which seems odd coming from such partisans of "freedom". I don't "dislike Free Software" per se. I do despise this sort of think-how-we-tell-you version of "freedom" you folks seem to have going. For my part, I am not and have never been a "free software advocate". I have advocated for open source software, on purely pragmatic grounds: some wheels don't need to be reinvented, and functions which don't differentiate aren't things on which a company can compete. I don't love the GPL(v2) more than the MPL or the BSDL. And I loathe the GPLv3. Simple as that. Might it be because you'd like to use it in your own proprietary software ? If the license allows it, and it's got useful functionality, I'm more than happy to use any piece of open source-licensed software as part of an overall project consisting of a mix of proprietary and open source software, sure. That's actually how I make my living,advising on open source licensing compliance, among other things. I'd like you to show where I've tried to get anyone to "accept a patent tax", here, on a GNOME list, or anywhere else, however, because I can't think of any instance in which I've done anything like that. Once again, I've simply recognized that patents exist. I've never suggested that anyone license one, outside of a business meeting. Google conspiracy theories are *so* twentieth century. Are you sure you work at Google? I only ask because it's pretty common knowledge, and has even been discussed at places like the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit, that Google maintains a pretty significant volume of internally developed patches to a variety of GPL-licensed components, including the kernel, which they do not share with the rest of the world, not being obligated to since they're never "distributed" the corresponding binaries outside of Google itself. In fact, it's been at least alluded to right here on LWN. "Linus asked: why aren't these patches upstream? Is it because Google is embarrassed by them, or is it secret stuff that they don't want to disclose, or is it a matter of internal process problems? The answer was simply 'yes.'"
Posted Oct 5, 2010 19:13 UTC (Tue)
by daniel (guest, #3181)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 19:32 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (3 responses)
Mm hm.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 20:58 UTC (Tue)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (2 responses)
> "all those neat kernel performance patches they've been keeping to
after being told "Actually, those mythical patches are gawdawful on the whole and we don't want them" (which is quite true by the way).
to:
> "Yeah, knew that, actually"
So what actually *do* you know Lefty ? It's easy to make assertions about withheld "neat kernel performance patches" which you then agree are "godawful .. and we don't want them".
So what was the point of asserting there were valuable kernel performance patches held private by Google ? You knew it wasn't true, by your own admission above.
Merely trolling ? It would match your behavior on the Gnome lists, but I was hoping that you might behave better in a forum such as lwn.
I guess the most probable reason was try try and damage the reputation of another poster by attempting associate him with lies about bad behavior by his employer. Which is pretty low. I'd prefer it if you were just trolling I think.
Jeremy.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 21:38 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Hey, you're the one adamantly refusing to "capitulate" in the name of freedom, pal. I guess it's okay if it's Google, though. That's different. I guess. But since you ask, in discussions at (in particular) the various Linux Foundation-sponsored Collaboration Summits to which I've been invited, with a variety of the kernel hackers, the subject of Google's use of open source has come up a number of times. Google clearly has several heavily modified versions of Linux used in-house, and they've said as much, for various purposes. Those modifications are intendedas I saidto boost performance, mainly, particularly within their server farms. Since they don't "distribute" these versions of Linux, they're not obligated to share any of these improvements, and, indeed, they don't. Now, on a couple of occasions, Google has attempted to share patches. In most cases, they've been rejectedas in the case of Google's proposed modifications to the kernel for Androidon a variety of grounds, for reasons that one might characterize as "wrongheadedness", "sloppiness" and the like. The upshot is that Google is pretty much the first organization around to fork the kernel in a significant and impactful way. Now there are two: the "regular" Linux kernel, and the "Android" Linux kernel. Thanks, guys! It's been saidand this was reported right in the LWN article I pointed out to youthat Google itself recognizes that the quality of its own work, even when not secret, is too "godawful" for them to even bother submitting. But why am I telling you this? You "work there". Right? Maybe if you spent more time cleaning up your code, and less time looking for trouble on LWN, we'd all be better off. Or is this how you spend your "20% time"?
Posted Oct 5, 2010 21:47 UTC (Tue)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Thanks.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 4:05 UTC (Tue)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
Also, those patents exist now, and Free Software wants to exist now. So some solutions must be found.
Concerning your last question, we had that before and I addressed it.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 1:05 UTC (Tue)
by CycoJ (guest, #70454)
[Link] (2 responses)
"Lastly, I do advocate a more realistic interpretation of "free software" that should include patent licensing deals as a cost of doing business rather than an attack on freedom itself. No constitution guarantees the freedom of software, but intellectual property is guaranteed by all constitutions in the civilized world."
Posted Oct 5, 2010 4:09 UTC (Tue)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 7, 2010 2:51 UTC (Thu)
by CycoJ (guest, #70454)
[Link]
So your argument is the German GG guarantees IP because IP is property and the GG guarantees private property. I've shown you a link that the notion if Copyright is indeed a property is at least controversial in Germany, this shows that your statement was at least misleading.
Also the section about Urheberrecht (Copyright) does not guarantee it, it merely states that it is governed by federal law. From that section federal law could actually say there is not Copyright.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 19:07 UTC (Tue)
by daniel (guest, #3181)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 19:14 UTC (Tue)
by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
[Link]
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:23 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (46 responses)
Spending your time pretending they don't, or wishing they didn't, isn't terribly constructive. No company involved in the creation of original or proprietary software can afford to unilaterally refuse to get involved in the patent landscape, I'm afraid. And they're better off doing so in a context of accurate legal understanding than one of philosophical fantasy.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 11:35 UTC (Sun)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (44 responses)
Of course patents exist! Regular patent lawsuits are like plague, software patents are more like anthrax. "Defensive patents" are kind of like vaccine (especially if they are donated to pools like OIN), but as in real life sometimes the strains used are activated and the vaccine induces disease. Just like with real plague sometimes contact with carrier means you can not be truly healthy and should learn to live with the disease - but often it can be contained or mitigated. Microsoft Florian says that if we can not avoid plague the first thing to do is to accept it. Sorry, but no: this is the last thing we should do. Sometimes there are no other choice, but in case of Android there are natural layer where such attacks should rejected: at handset manufacturer level. They produce devices and so they have money to pay for patents. If they don't try to sell to US market they can just ignore them. If they don't distribute Android (and most application developers don't do that) they don't need patents and they don't need to worry about patents.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 14:03 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (43 responses)
While we're at it, name calling does not further sensible discussion. Perhaps you should return when you have something substantive and sensible to share, as opposed to just shrieking at people. If you can't treat other participants with minimal respect, however, if would be better for all if you would simply go back to 4chan.
There's nothing natural about a handset manufacturer "rejecting" a claim of patent infringement, not if they want to stay in business, as Nokia (for example) discovered, unless you think it's also "natural" that they also ignore the courts and decisions coming from those courts which negatively affect the companies prospects.
"I don't believe in patents!" does not constitute a defense against claims of patent infringement.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 15:05 UTC (Sun)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (33 responses)
Don't hate the players, hate the game. :)
If you want to be able to make a living you have to deal with patents as they are part of the reality forced on all of us by the weight of government.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 0:01 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (32 responses)
Sorry, but no. If the game is deadly and unjust (like software patents game is) you must play it as little as possible and trying to be as human as possible. Think 1938 in Germany: if you see Jews in hospital (in volation of law!) you can be "a good citizen" and deliver this information to someone who can eject them. Or you can close the eyes are do nothing (in this case you don't even violate any law). Do you believe "don't hate the players, hate the game" is valid approach in this situation too? Sure. But there are ways to play this game without admitting that software without any attached hardware can violate patents. This is especially easy to do for handset manufacturers - and this is exactly what they should do.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 0:10 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (31 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 8:56 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (25 responses)
I've used Nazis not as analogue but as an example. There are others, but nazis are best known. They show succinctly why "but this is the law" defense is just wrong. This is important if we want to discuss patents fairly. Yes, laws are the laws, there are penalties for violation so you don't ignore them easily. But even Bible includes unlawful deeds made by prophets (think "The Exodus"). If you want to use "but this is the law" excuse then you must put law above everything - and eventually even above God. But if you did that then why do you react so negatively to Nazi stories related to law? The answer: Nazis are well-known story where "but this is the law" excuse led to incredible disaster and where the legitimately passed law was explicitly declared unjust later - and so they must be ignored and everyone who raises them publicly should be ridiculed and ostracized for the good of "but this is the law" religion. Yes, it makes discussion not rational but religious instead: if you don't want to accept primacy of Law and try to disprove this primacy then you are heretic and must be destroyed. Sorry, but I don't want to discuss religion beliefs here. On the other hand if you admit that law is often wrong then we can discuss patents fairly: first we should determine if they are good or bad (and there are ample evidence that they are bad: for example here), then we can decide what can be done about them without violating the law (the answer: not much, you can not ignore them and usually the only sane choice is to counterattack), etc. BTW it's obvious to anyone who's not subscribing to "the law is always right" religion that law is not always right: if "the law is always right" then why we have such a massive legislature in all countries which constantly changes this "always right"? And if law is not always right then why can't we discuss cases where it's not right? Why the law is even brought as excuse when we discuss if something is right or wrong? BTW when law is wrong, the goal is usually to change or circumvent the law, but as last resort law can be broken, too, if it's fatally unjust.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 12:11 UTC (Mon)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (5 responses)
I think we absolutely have to be able to discuss where the law is not right, why it isn't right, and what one can do to reconcile one's desire to do the right thing with the effect of unjust laws. And it's certainly not inappropriate to indicate that one doesn't accept the law as it stands, even if it does leave a certain amount of uncertainty about what one would recommend to, say, a business that risks getting prosecuted under such laws. Indeed, when people advocate that others shut up and accept the law, the burden is on those people to clarify whether they are only doing so in support of general obedience of the law (perhaps to caution others that they might be prosecuted, and even then, a continuous insistence that others "observe the law" makes for a tiresome Judge Dredd impersonation), whether they are doing so because they actually support the law as it stands, or whether it is because they see the law as having some legitimacy that is potentially derived from those who openly support it. Take this comment from Mr Mueller, for example: Beyond the observation that the best way to convince politicians is to show them an open briefcase filled with money, are we to believe that Mr Mueller regards the law as legitimate because large companies support it (or are not opposed to it), and that a revised law would only be legitimate if large companies supported it? This isn't idle debate, either: such matters have a significant effect on public policy. Should a society only invest in, say, renewable energy when the major oil companies decide it is appropriate? After all, they make the big money in that sector...
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:19 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (4 responses)
The rationale used to attack the FSF effort was the size of the companies supporting the bad law (and you gave a great example to show the problems with that approach).
What I find impressive is that, with the limited funds the FSF has, they were able to get a lot of independent units to sign on. A statistically rigorous analysis might confirm the FSF's claims and more.
I think it would help if the FSF went back and encouraged all of those small firms to add to their website a section where customers that supported those firms could easily send a letter (or sign a petition) to gov reps against software patents.
Many engineers that take out patents think it is a joke. And corps that take out many of them may largely use them for defensive purposes (and Sun had many hardware patents, not just software) http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_h... . If Sun didn't have to deal with the lawsuits and time and cost and practice of taking out patent, they might still be around. The patent game is won by the most aggressive and by the largest. Most firms have reasons to dislike the economic effects patents (especially those that are but software algorithm patents in disguise) have on their firms. The bigger suitcase of patents and army of lawyer is the net winner, before the product is even looked at. And the stifling effects of patents are part of their overall unethical associations.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:37 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (3 responses)
Many engineers that take out patents think it is a joke. Perhaps you imagine that Google should go into court and tell the judge, "But those engineers were just joking when they submitted those patents!" Hey, could work.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:04 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (2 responses)
I think Google may use many tools, and certainly a survey of the motivational and quality value of patent content, generally, by those practicing the art, could be one such tool.
Such opinions could also help adjust the law (which has nothing to do with Google, but everything to do with software patents and the threats these pose to lots and lots of people).
The more people that dislike software patents and can offer reasons, the more likely change will come.
Maybe Google and these suits will become a catalyst for the next major round of activity against software patents.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:29 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Your point is about dealing with the reality of lawsuits today. Indeed. That is, in fact, the subject of this story, as it turns out: the reality of a lawsuit today. Your point, speaking generously, might be about the desirability of changing the patent system at some unspecified point in the futurebut doubtless too far off to be of any assistance to Motorola, HTC or Googlethrough means that are completely unclear, other than they seem to have something to do with getting greater numbers of people to whine ineffectually about the situation in the comments columns of various web sites. I'm not sure this is really your best strategy. The "last major round of activity against software patents" in the US produced not a lot of comfort for your cause, as Florian has correctly pointed out: of the two routes they might have taken, the court took the more expansive view rather than the more restrictive one, all in all. If you do nearly as "well" in the next round, you'll be complaining even more loudly.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 2:46 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
For a number of reasons the situation is better. They agreed machine-or-transformation is a fairly comprehensive test, and they repeated that algorithms are abstract and obvious post solution activity cannot make the invention patentable.
They apparently knocked State Street out, and this had been used to broaden the standard in what machines/processes might be patentable.
They added as void (9-0) another example of a patent many patent supporters thought should have been acceptable.
The main problem for me is desktop software being erroneously patented. Bilski can definitely help fix this by more than just a trivial amount.
Also, a phone and many other devices should be treated similarly for patent purposes if the magic of the phone is via software instructions on ordinarily programmable chips. These are just ideal algorithms being carried out dutifully by a general purpose machine designed independent of the actual software algorithms (so it is non-novel and obvious at the time of the software invention), and the machine works to achieve the same exact value result a human would achieve. All hardware interactions are non-novel in the standard case (of the programmable chips and software). Note, that a machine created specifically to function just with those algorithms might be patentable, but that is different than having a person run those algorithms on their own general purpose machine (or, eg, existing phone). Updatable phones are not being changed in hardware (firmware upgrades might change the equation for the purpose of this narrow analysis).
There is room to argue either way, but the above is mostly why I think the situation is better today. How much near term improvement (anti-sw-pat) happens, if any, will depend on the interpretation adopted by the USPTO and future lower court judges.
Also, others will argue fairly well (and I could to some extent, but, for various reasons, I am willing to focus on the more gross problems) that even much hardware circuit logic (especially using old technology for digital behavior) also should not be patentable because these are an expression of mathematics. Eg, see http://web.archive.org/web/20200102195352/http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2010092621054289
Also, the court has not ruled on criteria that I think more clearly should remove software from patenting: does it promote the progress (a monopoly hand-cuffs many in the software field which creates a huge liability, especially because it lasts so long), are the patent laws equitable to all or do they discriminate, is free speech being hindered, etc.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 13:14 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (18 responses)
They show succinctly why "but this is the law" defense is just wrong. You're confused again: "this is the law" is not a "defense", it's a simple statement of fact. That is the law. Disliking it does not exempt one from it, and "I don't believe that's the law, or at least, it shouldn't be" is not a defense, either. Leave the Nazis out next time, you make yourself look as though you're not worth listening to by bringing in inflammatory irrelevancies. But even Bible includes unlawful deeds made by prophets (think "The Exodus"). When patent law comes to rely on the Bible, then that might be relevant. But it doesn't and it's not. On the other hand if you admit that law is often wrong... However, I don't believe the law is wrong in this case: I believe that Google, in its creation of Androidan effort in which it both set out to leverage the works of others while engaging in a variety of efforts to attempt to avoid the responsibilities attendant on using those worksalmost certainly violated a variety of patents held (now) by Oracle, as well as a variety held by Apple, as well as a variety held by Microsoft. Google did an end-run around the Sun's Java licensing provisions with Dalvik, and they did an end-run around the GPL with Bionic. I believe there's a good likelihood that Google is in the wrong here, not the law. Google's not being victimized here, there's a serious question about the propriety of their actions. Finally, you seem to be under the impression that I'm arguing that "the law is always right". This is most certainly not the case. The time to argue that a law is wrong, however, is not immediately after you've been charged with a crime under it. Presumably Google didn't create Android in order to be able to demonstrate their "civil disobedience" as far as patents went, but if they did, then they'll be gratified to be hauled into court, I suppose, and you shouldn't get in their way. If a law is wrong, you need to get the law changed, not whine about it's being wrong, not pretend it doesn't exist, not compare it with "plague" and "Nazis" and "unlawful prophets", none of which have anything to do with anything here. Those who believe that the prohibition against recreational use of marijuana in California is wrong are working, for example, to pass Proposition 19 to get the law changed. That's what you do when you think the law is wrong: you try to get the law changed. You don't pretend that it's okay to ignore violations of the law while it's still on the books, though. If someone is caught with a joint in California, "I support Prop 19!" is not going to help them in court (and least not before it passes, assuming it does pass, in November). While there are problems with the patent systemlargely owing to its being overloaded, and to terms of protection being arguably too long, and costs of litigation being too high. The latter seems to be the worst of the issues, and could be very easily remedied by the courts' adopting the principle that in a patent infringement case, if the defendant wins, the plaintiff pays all costs.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:54 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (5 responses)
This is the law is a defense as used by some. Perhaps you weren't using it as a defense, but it can certainly be a technique used to avoid discussing the fairness and desirability of a given law. Why might someone want to avoid such a discussion? Because they might support such a law and not want opposition to the law to grow enough to help it effect a changing of the law.
In short, if a person is defending something that benefits from the continuance of a given law, then "this is the law" is one approach to trying to defend the lasting condition of that law.
>> almost certainly violated a variety of patents held (now) by Oracle, as well as a variety held by Apple, as well as a variety held by Microsoft.
Are you talking about the (legally unacceptable) patenting of algorithms? The USPTO just asked for guidance in light of Bilski. Many people, for example, had used State Street decision to support the granting of "software patents" and very likely acquired these patents which were only justified by State Street interpretations of the law.
>> If a law is wrong, you need to get the law changed, not whine about it's being wrong, not pretend it doesn't exist, not compare it with "plague" and "Nazis" and "unlawful prophets", none of which have anything to do with anything here.
Your motivation is proper, but you do understand why people feel frustration and consider analogies, right?
>> While there are problems with the patent systemlargely owing to its being overloaded, and to terms of protection being arguably too long, and costs of litigation being too high.
There are other important problems (independent invention not recognized; burden of proof should be on the attacker; patenting being so costly creates a situation where small and medium entities can be sued repeatedly without them having leverage; prior art not being usable to sue for damage against those that sue with patents; the criteria of "nonobvious" being such a low bar that inevitable stifles when under any sort of stress; patents not being clearly ruled out in cases where the costs of manufacture were not very high; ..)
Yes, I agree with your examples as well. Thankfully, the abstract was clarified in Bilski not to be patentable. And process patents likely must pass the machine-or-transformation test and various past SCOTUS rulings (eg, to avoid a loophole of sneaking in information patents as a way to use a common machine for it's intended purposes).
Posted Oct 5, 2010 0:31 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (4 responses)
Thankfully, the abstract was clarified in Bilski not to be patentable. Don't be too thankful yet: a "load-leveling" method for NAND Flash, to cite just one example, ain't that "abstract". And with the sheer number of patents that are being brought to bear against Android overall, with suits against Motorola, HTC, and Google itselfit's highly unlikely that all of them are going to be tossed out.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 0:58 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 1:29 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'll certainly take it under advisement, but I've used that quoting style for probably eight years, in a wide variety of contexts, and in all that time, you and Martin are actually the first two to ever mention it, much less complain about it. Forgive me if it strikes me as just a wee bit high-strungI have to wonder how you manage to walk down the street if you find simple bold text this "jarring" that it's worth commenting on, much less demanding that I do something different. And what am I to do when the guy who hates italics comes along?
Now, I've seen someone using blockquote and purple text here, which I personally found visually irritating, especially in relation to the rest of the site's color scheme, but I managed to restrain myself from remarking on it. Should I have advised him to conform to my own preferred style...? Evidently not, since that would apparently vex you. It's a problem.
Tell you what: since this is evidently your "itch" to "scratch", why don't you and Martin start up a study group to put togetheror better still, demand that Jon put together (purely so I can see his response, actually)an HTML Style Guide for LWN.net?
Posted Oct 5, 2010 5:38 UTC (Tue)
by ABCD (subscriber, #53650)
[Link]
Posted Oct 5, 2010 2:57 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
I will guess what that is about, and it seems it isn't a software patent issue in the sense of limiting what software you run on the device.
I worry as a user and foss developer. Sure, patents have problems for many groups. The idea though is that once you buy the hardware, the patent issue has been resolved and you can create for it whatever software you want.
The open source hardware people will have more stuff to worry about, yes. And indirectly so will those of us that would prefer open source hardware.
One reason I care more about software is that most changes and creations occur as software. To relate to a different field, I don't want novels and other writings to be bogged down by patent monopolists. That too would remove too much from society.
I think one way to get the legal profession to rethink patents would be to allow patents for the work carried out routinely in that profession. A monopoly is just disgusting (for most participants) if you care about the practice.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:56 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (11 responses)
You clearly are stating your opinion about what should be done when a law is bad, but dismissed the original poster's opinion on how he feels people should deal with bad laws. His Nazi example gave good justification for why simply attempting to change the law is often not a good enough solution. Do you have a good justification why people should live with unjust laws and only fight them by attempting to overturn them? Can you cite some examples where this has ever been effective for radical change?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:38 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (10 responses)
....dismissed the original poster's opinion on how he feels people should deal with bad laws... I did, indeed, becausein the reality of the situation which this story discusseshis "opinion" on how "people" (presumably Motorola, in this instance) should deal with a (putatively) "bad law" (i.e. the law regarding the infringement of patents) is ridiculous and pointless. His "opinion" is evidently that Motorola should march into court and announce that the law is bad and that they refuse to be a party in any way, shape or form to this proceeding and then march out again. Flawless Victory. I frankly don't see Motorola coming out ahead in the end with an approach like that. So, should I have given his "opinion" deeper consideration? Why?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 19:58 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 20:21 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (8 responses)
Well, if that wasn't what he was suggesting, he needs to be clearer. In the face of a law requiring the reporting of Jewish patients to Nazi authorities, he stated that he wouldn't do so. How else is one to project that into the situation we're actually discussing? What should Motorola do based on this model, if not what I suggested? All I can see for them, in order to flout this "bad law", is to refuse to participate. Which would likely wind up in them owing Microsoft quite a bit of money, as I suggested. And no, I've never proposed that Motorola should take the course of action you suggest. They're named as a defendant in a suit (remember, that's what we're actually discussing here), and they need to respond to that, either by fighting it or by settling it. That would seem to be the range and breadth of their available options. I have no reason to believe that Motorolathe possessor of a significant patent portfolio themselveshave any desire to see the law changed, but if they do, it's a completely separate (although not entirely unrelated) issue to what they do in response to this actual suit. It's in no way a response to the suit which is the subject of this storysomething the poster in question failed to provide.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 21:01 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (7 responses)
Yes, perhaps the the original statement was off topic and not very relevant to the exact conversation which started the threads, but it veered off course before he responded. It's understandable if such threads are hard to follow. But, it was clear that the original statement
Claiming that the conversation was about Motorola specifically and droning on about your conclusions on this case seems rather pointless and evasive. You won't stand by your statements when they are pointed out to be potentially flawed, you simply tell us that we should be returning to the original topic.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 21:30 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (6 responses)
You seem bent on ignoring what people are actually talking about when it suits you... Actually, I'm "bent" on attempting to discuss the substance of this story, not people's inappropriate equivalencing of patents with plague. Silliness like that deserves to be ignored, once it's been pointed out as silly. Yes, perhaps the the original statement was off topic and not very relevant to the exact conversation which started the threads... Which would make it "off-topic" and "irrelevant", as I've said. It's understandable if such threads are hard to follow. They're not hard: they're pointless. Being off-topic and irrelevant, they add nothing to the actual discussion. ...a generalized approach to fighting bad law... Fine. And I've challenged himor youto show me how this "generalized approach" actually applies in this case. I've suggested that Motorola could boycott the proceedings entirely, which would result in their getting their asses decisively kicked. What's your suggestion, then? Or did you just feel like hijacking the comments here to declare your love of civil disobedience or something...? Claiming that the conversation was about Motorola specifically and droning on about your conclusions on this case seems rather pointless and evasive. You won't stand by your statements when they are pointed out to be potentially flawed, you simply tell us that we should be returning to the original topic. Perhaps you can show me more specifically where my "statements...are pointed out to be potentially flawed". I'm not seeing it, and I believe that you're making that claim as a dodge to continue an irrelevant and off-topic line of discussion, possibly because you feel you're at a disadvantage in actually discussing this story (which is about, let us recall, "Motorola specifically").
Posted Oct 4, 2010 21:54 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (5 responses)
I have little opinion about what Motorola should do, it doesn't justify your dismissal of so many people's opinions here, nor your flip flopping and shouting (that is what you sound like). And, if you can't admit that it might be flawed to solely attempt to "change bad law" in many cases, well, then I feel very saddened that you would be willing to apply bad law to people simply because it is law.
P.S. Do you really need to bold and italicize everything you quote (it has a strong shouting impact which perhaps you do not intend)?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 22:08 UTC (Mon)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
Indeed, I find the
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:01 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (3 responses)
...civil disobedience can be appropriate... So you keep claiming, but when asked (repeatedly) to provide a practical example of how it would be appropriate, or even applicable, to this situation, you come up with nothing. Less than nothing, really. I have little opinion about what Motorola should do... Then why are you posting here? If you simply want to air off-topic opinions, or regale the world with your views on unrelated matters, get yourself a blog. This is for commenting on the stories published here, something which seems to have escaped your notice. Do you really need to bold and italicize everything you quote... Yes. I really do. It's called "HTML". It's used widely on this new thing called "the web". I suppose you're simply going to have to bear with me.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:13 UTC (Mon)
by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
[Link] (2 responses)
Yes, I have commented way too much already, for this I am sorry. I agree that my words are not that important. But, yours apparently are, your comment count on this article is 25 so far, I suspect more than anyone else. The personal blog idea, it's probably a good one.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:38 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'll take that as "I intend to shout at you and everyone else here". Well, you can certainly take it any way you please, Martin, that's your lookout, not mine. My "shouting at you" is entirely in your head, a complete figment of your own imagination, and I accept no responsibility whatsoever for it. I don't recall saying that your words weren't "important", but I did suggest that you were being off-topic, and you seemed to agree.
I don't recall insisting that my words were "important", either, but as someone who's assisted in the writing of patents and developing strategy around patent portfolios on a professional basis, I actually have an interest in the substance of this story, as opposed to using it as a hobbyhorse for venting my various political views on tangential or unrelated issues. Again: if you want to discuss actual patent reform in concrete and informed terms, fine. If you want to discuss this story, fine. However, if you just saw the words "Microsoft" and "patent" and had some sort of Pavlovian impulse to just drop in and tell us all how nice it would be the world were an entirely different place than the place it is, or inform us as to Florian's choices of software, or call people names, or insist that patents are a disease, or let us know what the appropriate response to Nazis demanding whether you have Jewish patients in your hospital might be, that seems unreasonable to me.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 8:59 UTC (Tue)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link]
> blah blah blah
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:32 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (4 responses)
You do know the meaning of an "analogy", right?
I am sure we could find suitable analogies between progress destroying, industry debilitating, consumer taxing, freedom abridging entities like the above and software patents.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:54 UTC (Mon)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
Except that there's no need to: an example was made using a situation widely regarded as one where the applicable laws were unjust and where one would rightfully choose not to accept the imposition of such laws. Thus, it was merely an illustration of the principle of not accepting bad laws, not to provide an excuse for people to "cry Godwin".
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:31 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (2 responses)
Now, plagues are noted for killing their victims indiscriminately; Nazis are noted for instigating wars and committing willful genocide. Software patents do none of those things, and to make analogies which somehow suggest that they do leaves the impression that you lack even the slightest sense of actual perspective on the situation.
This impression may, for all I know, be entirely accurate. If it isn't, however, and if you don't care to make the impression that you're simply a histrionic indulging in ridiculous hyperbole, you should choose your analogies more carefully. If your certainty is accurate, see whether you can manage to make better (or even some) sense next time around.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:04 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (1 responses)
Well, I didn't make the analogies. I'm not even sure if I read over the examples, but I could find common points and so I replied. Using hyperbole can be a very useful tool.
Someone (pboddie) who apparently did pay more attention to the example already commented on it in a reply to me. It was stated that the analogy was aimed at our relationships to bad laws (and not specifically a patent issue).
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:24 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Using hyperbole can be a very useful tool. If you're attempting to appeal to emotion rather than reason, perhaps. It was stated that the analogy was aimed at our relationships to bad laws (and not specifically a patent issue). Which would make it off-topic and irrelevant, unless someone can manage to tie it back to a patent issue, something which no one seems capable of managing.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 23:46 UTC (Sun)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (7 responses)
Of course not. "I don't really believe I infringe these patents but I agree not to ask USITC to ban Kinect for violation of my patents... if we'll just sign a blanket patent agreement" is valid defense. Rejection of patents does not mean you should ignore court or fight to the death, but you must at least force the aggressor to sign an agreement which is not saying you accept these particular patents. Sure, Microsoft will go to bully others, but this is the least you can do.
Why? Easy: this is the only outcome it can agree to: if Motorola acknowledge validness of FAT patents it'll lose the ability to use Android with FAT support. Because such agreement will be direct violation of paragraph 7 of GPLv2. Yes, it's probably true that Motorola will pay "Microsoft tax" in the end, but it must do so without ever admitting they violated any software patents in first place. It's easy for Motorola or any handset manufacturer because there are hardware patents involved and it can always claim the real agreement was about these and software patents were just included in blanket agreement - but for pure software company it's much harder. That's why handset manufacturers must deal with patents, not anyone else. As for name-calling... I do treat real participants with respect, but any "free software activist" who uses Windows 7 and MS Office 2010 while offering to use "an alternative, legally safe platform such as .NET/C#" is a shill or troll who does not deserve it. I'm not sure if he's paid by Microsoft or just thinks he can discredit FOSS by playing it's friend - and don't really care.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 0:17 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (6 responses)
"I don't really believe I infringe these patents but I agree not to ask USITC to ban Kinect for violation of my patents... if we'll just sign a blanket patent agreement" is valid defense. That doesn't sound like a defense, that sounds like a settlement offer. if Motorola acknowledge validness of FAT patents it'll lose the ability to use Android with FAT support. As Florian has correctly pointed out, there's no need for Motorola to "acknowledge validness [sic] of these patents": in every single instance where Microsoft has brought them out, the parties have settled. This suggests pretty strongly that there is, indeed, something to them. They've never been shown to be invalid. I do treat real participants with respect... I beg to differ. People are free to use the software and equipment that they prefer. They are not required to submit to some sort of litmus test as a precondition for being treated with simple decency, something at which you're shown yourself to be a consistent and ongoing failure, as you've demonstrated right here, yet again.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 8:13 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Not every battle is worth fighting. Sometimes you even need to surrender the capital to win the war. But the important thing here is to surrender as little as possible and leave as much freedom for counterattack as possible. Sorry, but no. Please read: this myth is already disproved. If some patent is brought again and again it's prime evidence that patent is baseless and the company just tries to squeeze as much money as possible from it before it becomes invalid. This is usually done by picking weak companies who can not afford not to lose but to just even fight - and we know it's exactly what Microsoft did with these patents. Oracle patents look much, much better in comparison: they are brought against single strong rival, they are brought in court only (so there are do undue pressure to settle lawsuit even if patents are unenforceable), etc. It does not mean Oracle is right, of course (think SCO), but it looks somewhat plausible: this looks like an attack of someone who believes he's right. Microsoft attack? Racketeering under fig leaf of "we must protect our IP" rhetoric, plain and simple. Funny that. Why do you think Bill Clinton never used such defense before the Senate? The answer is simple: public figures are different. They are held to higher standards. So why Florian deserves anything else? He pretends to be FOSS activist. You can not do that while using latest Microsoft products. I can buy the excuse "Oh, you know, I'm so accustomed to this 10-years old WordPerfect that I'm still using it". Barely: while it's often hard to break old habits and switch to different program ten years is looong time and if you can not find a replacement in ten years then the question arises about you dedication to FOSS. But latest and greatest Microsoft products? Sorry, but this makes you shill and you must be treated as such. It's not as if Florian decided to become "FOSS activist" yesterday.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 13:24 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Not every battle is worth fighting... Well, you don't get to choose whether or not to "fight" a patent suit in which you've been named. I don't think Google has enough to "surrender" to get itself out of this in that fashion, and I suspect that Oracle, at least, is not interested in playing that way. Sorry, but no. Well, you can speculate about it all you want, but these particular patents have not lost at any trial so far. If you want to see the matter settled, then you should be gratified to see Google getting taken to court. Maybe they will manage to invalidate those patents. Having actually read them, though, I don't share your confidence here, and given the number of patents that Google (or its Android-phone-manufacturing tributaries) have been accused of violating, I seriously doubt they're going to be able to get them all invalidated. Be interesting to see them try. Why do you think Bill Clinton never used such defense before the Senate? The answer is simple: public figures are different. They are held to higher standards. Except that "public figure" has a pretty specific meaning, and while Bill Clinton might qualify, it's highly doubtful that Florian does. Your arguing that he's a "public figure", purely in order to allow you to call him names with impunity, seems to suggest that your actual interests here stem largely to trolling for effect. You're certainly not doing yourself any favors here with this.
Posted Oct 6, 2010 18:22 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Ever since version 9 its attempts to copy Word have been dragging it downhill...
Cheers,
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:01 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (2 responses)
I don't work for Microsoft in a high enough position (or in any position) to know if your statement is likely true or not, but people settle to avoid very costly litigation, thinking there aren't alternatives. It's also possible the terms benefited the other party monetarily or perhaps the other party was convinced to adopt an interest in future royalties from those or other patents.
There truly are quite a few possibilities, and for all we know, the terms of the offer got better and better the more the sued entity called the bluff. Microsoft has at least given away their software in cases where they thought they would lose the whole deal to Linux, for example. The fact is that creating the belief that their patents are legit is very valuable to Microsoft so naturally they might consider paying money in the short-term to help promote that view.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 1:50 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
I don't work for Microsoft in a high enough position (or in any position) to know if your statement is likely true or not... If you did, you wouldn't tell me outside of a licensing discussion conducted under a pretty stiff non-disclosure agreement. ...for all we know, the terms of the offer got better and better the more the sued entity called the bluff... This seems a little unlikely. Why would anyone ever stop "calling the bluff" under those circumstances? Microsoft has at least given away their software in cases where they thought they would lose the whole deal to Linux, for example. Which provides exactly zero support for the notion that they'd give way a license on these patents. The patents are public, and readable by anyone who cares to, including patent attorneys who are not only extremely skilled in the law, but who also well understand the technology. So, somehow, no one in Tom Tom's legal department, and no one in Motorola's legal department, and in fact, no one in the entire legal world has really been able to convince themselves that there are flaws in these patents worth bringing into a courtroom. In spite of this, you continue to be certainand the basis for that certainty is very unclearthat they're somehow lurking in there.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:23 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
Because in some cases it might not be a bluff (I'm thinking poker). The contexts would be different across parties. As an example related to Windows being given cheaply, this would depend on the size of the account and on how likely Microsoft thinks they might stick with Linux and influence others.
Also, each different party is likely unaware of what the earlier party got.
[So, I didn't intend to suggest a generalization, but was suggesting that in some cases it might be happening that those that "call the bluff" somewhat get more than others that don't.]
>> Which provides exactly zero support for the notion that they'd give way a license on these patents.
No, because the point is that the end game is not just that one party. There are consequences for gaining or losing an account. This is particularly important for those that deal heavily in monopolies and/or rely on certain psychological tools working for them.
>> So, somehow, no one in Tom Tom's legal department, and no one in Motorola's legal department, and in fact, no one in the entire legal world has really been able to convince themselves that there are flaws in these patents worth bringing into a courtroom.
Again, not necessarily at all.
Microsoft picks and chooses the licensee (they haven't created problems for everyone). This is where the bluff comes in. In some cases, Microsoft will not budge, but in others they will because there could be costs to their overall end game.
Eg, having a streak of "winning" negotiations is very valuable for lowering future resistance; hence, to preserve that advantage, they might settle with someone under terms where all references to the deal would be in terms laid out by Microsoft, and Microsoft might even pay the other party for this privilege (of course, this would be a case of a bluff gone badly, since Microsoft can generally just ignore someone if they think that party might conceivably end up creating problems for Microsoft).
All of these are realistic business possibilities.
Another possibility is that Microsoft has offered to share future royalty payments.
Another possibility is that Microsoft argues that striking any sort of eventual deal can help the other company by trying to argue that supporting software patents would help that party down the line.
These are all realistic business possibilities. Microsoft might try these or others on a case by case basis. Why not? Is business not their game? Are they likely not very clever and resourceful?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:29 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
Well, the very recent Bilski decision affirmed a strong machine-or-transformation test and essentially gutted State Street which had raised lots of fears and appeared to be in effect just prior to Bilski.
Nokia has made some smart moves towards open source and the wider community (eg, Linux). We collectively have a lot of influence, ability to help argue down patents (including finding prior art), the moral high ground (which is very useful before a jury of peers), a real value proposition for society that surpasses the patents yet is threatened by them. ETC.
Most companies are much smaller than Nokia; however, anyone can become the target of a shakedown. Software is everywhere. We all use it and many create extensions with it. We all need to speak up and band together. Collaborate. There is strength in numbers (especially with individual independent voices).
Patent trolls have gained prominence (eg, because of past former Microsoft execs) and represent a growing threat.. their taxes can be very significant. Their taxing will remove money from the system (including profits the government itself might have anticipated taxing for socially beneficial purposes). And some large companies also support the taxing and competition repressing (anti-consumer) features of the power that come with patents (so they would want software patents to be legitimized).
Posted Oct 4, 2010 17:18 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
Exactly, it's important to communicate the problems. Communicate with others in your industry (eg, software related or nonsoftware related), with customers, and with government representatives. Eg, add an easy to use form to your website allowing customers to write to their reps and/or sign a petition.
I see a lot of companies not getting active and being shaken down, perhaps repeatedly over the coming decade. People that haven't yet would probably gain from uniting and supporting each other. Software patents allow a small group to tax the industry and consumers. It's a game won by the big money and the "trolls" that don't produce products but simply shake people down. If you produce, you will have to face a constant risk from trolls and a larger group that wants you to pay significant fees to cover their many many patents.
Heck, independent invention and fair use are not built into the law.
[Well, patents weren't used against so many people traditionally, because a motivation for the law was to facilitate capitalization into the real dollar millions of dollars to manufacture the item.]
Original software (with many many unpatented ideas and perhaps almost entirely original expressive content (a la copyright law) is being created by many people in very large quantities and used in very sophisticated systems. Much of this software I refer to is also openly revealed to the world and available for $0 (Linux is an example). This is only possible because software is expression, afterward simply automatically loaded into the device that will use it. Anyone can do this. You don't need a million dollars, and a monopoly is ridiculous (that is why the SCOTUS ruled algorithms to be abstract and believes the machine-or-transformation test is a very very good test). A monopoly (enforced) would tie up so many people and add so much overall cost that free speech at a large scale would be violated in practice and innovation smacked hard down. Progress would not be promoted, and many people's original existing works would be deemed illegal if we are to believe the threats of the people holding the software patent paper on such software.
Look at how funny is the patent law in general though obviously the real harm becomes clear once it affects a large number of creators and users directly: it says that to get a patent, you have to "invent" something.. get this.. non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art!!
Now, this means that if you are starting off "in the art" today, and you take a year to figure something out (ie, you didn't think it was obvious), that this could very well have been allowed to be patented by the USPTO by someone ahead of you and be in effect today. It also means that if you are experienced (eg, your employees or those contributing open source software like Linux that you might use), then a monopoly is being granted on things these experienced people very possibly consider to be obvious and already anticipated or could deduce very quickly .. or perhaps have even developed already.
Unless you ask for help from the people sharing their prior art (the open source world), you may not realize that prior art existed. [Open source collaboration took off with the creation and rise of the Internet, btw. It's a superior model -- collaboration is -- that some of these patent attackers want to hold back to preserve their old ways and very high profits on information bits we call software.. eg, like the bits on a software CD -- a CD is a machine!! how funny. What's next, to claim that putting that information into your computer is a patenable act!! Anyway, open source allows people to charge for their time to integrate and expand such software in custom ways (as well as other possibilities), but do not in practice allow anyone to become billionaire by.. um.. "printing money". Again, don't forget that if software patents were legal, they would pre-empt original works many could perform in an afternoon or 10 in their homes and then share with the world by dinner time (on the 10th day).]
And no matter how talented someone is (or not), they can't be the first to do everything (and most creators, can't afford to patent a tiny fraction of all their ideas). Everyone can't be first by definition. So we give a monopoly to a single -- that's right, a single -- person to stop everyone else coming to the same conclusions is say a year's time (or perhaps a little more time or in many cases much less time).
The bar is ridiculously low and virtually guarantees progress will not be promoted, at least not when you step on many toes for every single such monopoly granted (and software has many creators/inventors because of it's very low cost.. it's like writing math/fiction -- you create algorithms and you create virtual reality descriptions) and not whenever the costs to manufacture don't warrant monopoly granting (as is obviously the case for software, as demonstrated quick convincingly over and over by the Linux (open source) world because manufacturing software is so cheap these days).
Could you imagine if we rewarded the winner of a track and field race one time and then that person was the only one allowed to run future races or to set the terms and give themselves nice handicaps? Would that promote the quality of the sport? No, it would instead discourage many from competing. Perhaps the software patent proponents want that -- to discourage innovation and development so that in enough time it appears like only they do things. Yeah, consumers will really gain there.
These giants supporting patents have very low costs to manufacture software (unpatenable algorithms.. mental steps for information processing with the obvious post-solution step of displaying results and accepting more information from the user on a continual basis -- this was "novel" many decades ago, not today), yet want to get the 20 year monopolies enforced. Listen, volunteers (!!) are creating very good quality software. This is software that likely would infringe on some patents, while at the same time having many original pieces of innovation. That is the essence of software.
The very large companies that will come to get money from you (perhaps using a proxy litigation firm) have a pipeline of lawyers and average engineers cranking out "nonobvious" patents. They threaten to sue you out of business. That is unacceptable. Monopolies should never have been granted. And if software is not patentable, the USPTO should stop granting such patents.
OK, so software algorithms are abstract. The SCOTUS has already ruled on that. And most uses of software are obvious: you stick it into the computer and enjoy the results of all those calculations and information processing for which the computer/device was designed to accomplish. Can people patent calculations done by a calculator or its display? The way the machine calculates has been and is being patented, but the calculations you want it to perform is a total abstraction, and frankly, others should not deprive you of that liberty or try to "tax" you for such use, especially if the calculations to be performed (to effect the virtual realities dreamed up by some people) were largely original content. [And who can afford to read and understand the thousands of patents being granted continuously, allegedly, many of which can be called software patents or will be used to try and tax your use of a computer that way.]
What may happen to some groups is that those with the unfair and stifling monopoly patent papers will come to your door and demand ransom. I guess each will react their own way.
And one reason I use open source is because these are people that recognize the value to industry and to society of collaboration. I don't support software patent supporters or patron them if I can at all avoid it. If I get sued, I want to have the moral high ground and know I am part of a wide collaboration going on, not be helping a few of the greediest who want to mint money and stifle progress for their own greedy ends.
>> No company involved in the creation of original or proprietary software can afford to unilaterally refuse to get involved in the patent landscape, I'm afraid.
Well, no one is alone. The number of people writing (and using) open source software (and no patents.. but using licenses like the GPL) is of very significant size and likely growing at a healthy pace. You progress faster when you collaborate in creating virtual worlds and algorithms.
I am not a lawyer.
I don't support software patents because they would stifle and abridge a whole lot of people's Constitutional rights. They also bias greatly against most folks in favor of the highly ambitious (in the litigation sense) and likely already quite wealthy.
And note that it can be very costly and time consuming to prove prior art in court. This is why many people allow themselves (wrongfully) to be shaken down. We have to shed light on this and shame the people doing the shaking down. Share your experiences with a wide group and seek the collective wisdom, voting, boycotting, and shaming power in numbers. Sometimes those small firms are intimately connected with giants of industry that stand to lose a lot of business if we work as a group.
This comment includes the sorts of things I periodically share with my elected representatives. It's important to share this with them.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 8:01 UTC (Sat)
by mchazaux (guest, #64024)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 8:48 UTC (Sat)
by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 11:58 UTC (Sat)
by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063)
[Link] (4 responses)
The act of filing a patent is clearly a representation that the "ideas" described in the patent are new and innovative. Under UK Law, even an implied representation still counts for the offence of fraud by false representation.
Going through the other conditions there, it is clearly untrue or misleading and also clearly intended to make a financial gain.
I would love to see a private criminal prosecution, if the Crown Prosecution Service doesn't choose to pursue the case itself.
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:52 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 15:38 UTC (Mon)
by deepfire (guest, #26138)
[Link] (1 responses)
What is the point of your comment?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 15:45 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Posted Oct 3, 2010 9:36 UTC (Sun)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 8:47 UTC (Sat)
by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
[Link] (1 responses)
There's the FAT long file names one among them, another one is I/O scheduling for flash devices. Two of the patents sound a lot like hal/dbus/g-p-m/devkit api to hardware state and notification mechanism. What's left is copying contacts (a file copy with sort of primitive and rather obvious merging mechanism), a context menu (?), adding a meeting to calendar (it was possible from a desktop computer, but hey this is a new invention -- to do so from a phone, right?).
The software patents will probably never stop amusing me. I hope Motorola just has a similarly weird patent portfolio they can use to counter-sue.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 3:46 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Posted Oct 2, 2010 11:13 UTC (Sat)
by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966)
[Link] (11 responses)
I picked one of the patents at random
7,644,376: Flexible architecture for notifying applications of state changes (filed in 2003 granted in 2010 ?)
Here is the first claim:
"A method for providing notifications to clients in response to state property changes, comprising: at a notification broker that is located on a mobile device, receiving an automatic notification request from a client application on the mobile device to receive a notification in response to an event that originates on the mobile device; wherein the event is associated with change in a state property of the mobile device, wherein execution of the client application on the mobile device is dependent upon a received notification; wherein the notification request comprises a permanent notification request and a transient notification request; wherein the permanent notification request is stored by the notification broker in a data-store on the mobile device that maintains the notification request across a reboot; wherein the transient notification is not maintained across the reboot; ensuring that the state property is registered with the notification broker, wherein the notification broker includes state properties that are updated by different components within the mobile device; determining when the state property changes; determining when the client should receive notification of the state property change; and the notification broker on the mobile device notifying the client of the state property change when determined."
This type of idea is pretty obvious to anyone involved in software development (which is not to say that the _implementation_ is trivial) but this is a patent not copyright of an implementation. This has been done for ages by things like the Corba event service. Maybe not intended for mobile use but you can take desktop code and recompile for mobile.
We really need to get rid of this whole software patent nonsense. Small companies and individuals can't afford it and large companies should be spending their money on developers and innovation rather than lawyers.
Seems to me like the western world in general and the US in particular (I'm a European - it's a little better here but moving the wrong way) have let groups I would qualify as "parasites", in particular lawyers and traders take over the system. Of course we need a legal system and hence lawyers to make it work but when it gets to the point that technology companies prefer to fight in the courtroom rather than the market it has gone too far. Likewise with stock markets - originally they existed to fund industry, which was a laudable goal. Now that role is minor compared to the pure speculation which has no benefit to society.
If the western world doesn't wake up and get back to a "frontier" mentality where the objective is to advance human knowledge, technology and capabilities rather than playing games with the system it will either stagnate or be made irrelevant by others (maybe China).
Posted Oct 3, 2010 6:38 UTC (Sun)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (9 responses)
The rest of the patent is taken up with diagrams and verbiage detailing a proposed implementation which is intended to support the claimssomething you correctly describe as non-trivialand it is that which is the subject of the patent. If this patent contains, as you claim, a description of the operation of CORBA's notification service, I'd be interested in the original description in CORBA for comparison.
The claims aren't patented, the realization of a specific, and specifically described, device-or-mechanism to satisfy the claims is. So, what, exactly is it that's "stupid" about this patent? (Free clue: While the idea of an antigravity skateboard is pretty obvious to any skateboarder who's ever seen a bird, or "Back to the Future", that by itself doesn't enable anyone to write a patent on such a device.)
Posted Oct 3, 2010 22:13 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
If the diagrams consist of logic (as opposed to a description of the relevant hardware) then they most certainly ARE trivial.
A description of RSA cryptography is "trivial". A description of the four-colour theorem is "trivial". Just because I can't understand it, if it's proven logic then it is, by definition, trivial. That's what the word "trivial" means when talking about logic!
Cheers,
Posted Oct 4, 2010 0:23 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link]
Posted Oct 4, 2010 3:58 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (5 responses)
Free clue: the device-or-mechanism you are talking about is software. Which is an algorithm (a piece of mathematics) written in a specific language.
What is stupid about this patent is that it is obvious that something like this needs to be done to anyone involved in requirements of the application. The proof, of course, is that many skilled in the art have done it, completely unaware of this patent.
Or are you claiming here that without this headache inducing text your skilled programming outfit wouldn't know how to come up with stuff like this?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 13:38 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (4 responses)
The "device-or-mechanism" I'm talking about is a phone, or other handheld computing device, as described in the patent. It is not pure software, being described specifically in terms of the operation of a deviceit could be implemented with gears or steam valves, as opposed to binary code, but that, of course, would increase the size of the phone dramatically. The relevant question is not whether someone could implement it today, but whether anyone actually implemented the invention described in this patent prior to the filing of the patent. If so, then that's "prior art", and if it can be shown in court, should serve to invalidate the patent. If not, then whether or not anyone implemented it with or without seeing the patent, they're arguably in infringement. Finding a patent to be inconvenient does not constitute grounds for invalidating it, I'm afraid.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:43 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
But that would help significantly improve the odds of it not being in violation of Bilski: unpatentable algorithms with obvious post-solution activity.
Next thing you know people will be claiming patent infringement for running digital music on a CD slot that makes a dancing robot dance a little differently, even when the exact model describing the dance behavior to music is documented.
"I patented that music.. I mean dance!"
BTW, does Google produce phones?
Posted Oct 4, 2010 22:22 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (2 responses)
Yes, we already know that this is how they wrap patents on mathematics to get their way. Any computer can also be implemented "by hand". Unfortunately, it is the algorithm that is patented in the end. Which is software. Which is maths.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 23:23 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 0:58 UTC (Tue)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
To be perfectly honest, I'm kinda enjoying all this rubbish in a perverse kind of way. Big companies are getting a taste of their own medicine and consumers are paying for it. Well, if we're all so stupid to let it continue, we probably deserve it.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:34 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
The claims essentially define scope. The claims' scope is what is used to determine infringement. If someone comes along with something quite different in detail but is read in the claims, then it would violate (except to the extent the claims' scope has been reduced beyond what a reading of it would entail).
>> The claims aren't patented, the realization of a specific, and specifically described, device-or-mechanism to satisfy the claims is.
What does this mean?
Many people getting patents never even build their machine or process, etc.
The scope is what matters for infringement and this is determined largely by the wording of the claims.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 3:52 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
He, he... There is a reason Wall St is now called Casino :-)
Posted Oct 2, 2010 15:41 UTC (Sat)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (12 responses)
It seems to me very unlikely that Google and its hw partners (HTC, Motorola) can win all the lawsuits going on. So it will all end up with specific licensing deals, or with making Android non-free (less likely but not impossible). Regardless, it will be very very hard for small companies to use Android.
Right now I would not use Android in an embedded device, because I doubt Microsoft will bother negotiating with our tiny company. We don't even own a single patent! :-) Is the time near when only mega-corporations will be able to manufacture anything with software on it? I am sure that is what they want.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 16:14 UTC (Sat)
by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)
[Link] (9 responses)
There is always the risk of hold outs who won't join the pool of course, but at least they tend to go after bigger targets first. Of course a rational patent system would have mandatory licensing at reasonable and non-discriminatory rates as one of its first principles.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 16:40 UTC (Sat)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (8 responses)
The problem is that they exist in the first place, not that they are poorly designed. Software related patents in particular, but it increasingly seems that the whole system is just broken by design.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 17:34 UTC (Sat)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (7 responses)
If you want to read about patents you should read this book. Patents only make some sense WRT pharmacy - and then only because new drugs must pass expensive clinical tests which are paid by initial developer and are not paid by imitator. The problem can be fixed by changing rules of mandatory tests.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 0:26 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (6 responses)
Good plan.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 8:33 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
If the US rules are so superior then why life expectancy is behind Cuba and Chile? I'm not saying mandatory tests must be abandoned (just like the authors of the book are not saying that), but the firms can be compensated differently then by giving them patents. For example they can be simply reimbursed after the drug passes the test - perhaps with some coefficient (to compensate for the drugs which don't pass the tests). Other arrangements are possible too. But it's clear today that A LOT OF money in pharmacy is spent on "me too" drugs so clearly patents hurt the innovation, not help it in pharmacy too ("me too" drug is not an innovation - it's pure waste from the society POV).
Posted Oct 4, 2010 13:42 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 4, 2010 18:54 UTC (Mon)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
The khim comment I think you were answering was about the legitimacy of classes of patents. That's not fair game in this discussion?
And that comment and going back many more in this thread (finding one more by khim) did not show me khim name-calling, but I can take your word that khim was name-calling elsewhere.
Posted Oct 4, 2010 20:21 UTC (Mon)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (2 responses)
I'm guessing that it's because Cuba and Chile probably have fewer people who desperately need to eat less and move more.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 1:32 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 5, 2010 6:59 UTC (Tue)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link]
There is a rather well known (moral) tale from the world of R&D about truly understanding your experiments. One pharmaceutical research group discovered that by giving their test animals a certain drug they lived significantly longer than the reference group. You can imagine the expectations of wealth and fame here.
And it was all dashed when it was found out the drug made the test animals sick so they could not eat too much while the reference group were overeating and "anjoying" a western styled reduction in life expectancy.
I have not heard if they applied for a patent.
Posted Oct 2, 2010 17:19 UTC (Sat)
by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)
[Link] (1 responses)
They want you to buy Windows Mobile 7 instead of Android.
That's a nice Android phone you're selling there. It'd be a real shame if someone were to sue your for it....
Posted Oct 2, 2010 19:12 UTC (Sat)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link]
Posted Oct 4, 2010 20:31 UTC (Mon)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (4 responses)
1. "Florian, while clearly knowledgeable about the field which he is discussing, uses Microsoft products and, by virtue of that, has no business speaking here, no matter what the correctness of what he says may be."
2. "Florian is attempting to confuse us with actual relevant facts, and thereby interfering with our attempts to imagine a better world, a free software paradise where there are no patents and everyone's a developer, and while none of them earn more than a 'mere living'* at it, as opposed to a decent salary, they are happy in spite of that because they have once again become 'eager to work in the field for the joy of accomplishment'*."
* Richard M. Stallman, "Why Software Should Be Free"
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:28 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (3 responses)
And now we know more about the color of your lenses.
Not meant as an insult, but I think you have overgeneralized conveniently perhaps.
Posted Oct 5, 2010 15:16 UTC (Tue)
by hozelda (guest, #19341)
[Link] (2 responses)
Large companies have a number of levers over start-ups. Starts-up have their own share, but, as a rough indicator of lever strength, we can consider the longevity large companies tend to have vs start-ups.
Mike and the people over at techdirt make a decent case on an ongoing basis that execution is more important than IP (and don't like IP or at least not in its current form and how it is (ab)used). They show cases of small firms thriving without leveraging it, even as larger firms try to copy them. They frequently target copyright, and, as another example, show the successes and diversity found in many industries where copyright is not applicable (eg, fashion, restaurant, comedy, football, ...). Most people would probably agree copyright is way too long so way past the point of promoting the progress as the years run by.
Whether patents were once a tool of the start-up, it seems now the large companies have the advantage (and this has promoted somewhat the spread of the patent troll business model, if only because the large co offer a very large target and because they otherwise hold so much leverage against you if you try to take products out under the current patent landscape). Many people like the idea of a healthy environment for start-ups. It's a different character of people that tend to seek employment at these firms, but I think it's healthy to make sure start-ups will not be drowned in courtroom patent attacks or face any sort of significant handicap when the large companies come asking for tribute (or outright injunctions).
Posted Oct 5, 2010 17:04 UTC (Tue)
by Lefty (guest, #51528)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'm pointing out that as part and parcel of the idealized world of "software freedom" that RMS discusses in the essay I cite, he states very clearly that developers are overpaid, and in fact have unrealistic expectations about what they should get paid. He goes on to say that making all software "free" would resolve this, per force as it were, by reducing incomes for programmers down to "a mere living". The massive reduction in pay (and corresponding reduction in ROI on their investment in becoming programmers in the first place) would be offset by their rediscovering the "joy of accomplishment" inherent in their work.
I personally don't believe that 99% of developers what anything like that, regardless of how they feel about "free software" otherwise. I've never met a programmer worth the air he consumed who was willing to cut his own pay down to minimum wage to further the cause of "software freedom". I suspect a number of them might, under those circumstances, find greater "joy" inhering to the accomplishments available to the occupations of lawyer, architect, stockbroker, or any other highly-skilled job which hasn't had its payscale "freed down" to a level which might seem like prosperity "only to a Pakistani bricklayer" as Neil Stephenson put it in "Snow Crash".
Posted Oct 6, 2010 11:19 UTC (Wed)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
I thought that most people were generally in agreement that you can still support the notion of Free Software without agreeing with 100% of the personal views of any particular individual in the Free Software movement. In any case, regarding the economic influence of Free Software (and ignoring bizarre lawsuits accusing the GPL of being a price-fixing instrument), although Free Software might encourage a more efficient economy by reducing the amount of money spent on proprietary software that, for example, could have been improved or extended at significantly less cost had it been non-proprietary software, there are plenty of opportunities for earning a decent living in such an economy. Stallman points this out in his essay, in fact, so it isn't a fair summary at all to claim that he thinks everyone should be programming at "minimum wage" levels. Now, one can question whether it is wise to divert a large stream of revenue from one sector of the economy to others, particularly if one is a politician in whose district there are companies operating in that particular sector who employ significant numbers of people. But ultimately, when such companies sit on top of large cash reserves, in some cases accumulated by unethically exploiting their market position, one has to wonder whether that money might not do more good elsewhere, and not just through occasional and often conditional charitable donations to a selection of worthy and not-so-worthy causes.
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Invalid_patents_remain_unchallenged
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
I guess the point is, yeh, I agree that quick cheap justice doesn't work, and it's painfully obvious that slow expensive processes don't provide justice in this context, so the patent system simply doesn't work for software.
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Wol
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
#include IANYL
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
#include IANYL
- for funding, assuring the VC people that your idea most likely is new and equally importantly does not infringe existing rights
- for startup, making sure you are not killed off by large existing players
- for cross licensing purposes, typically used by those making a living from their IPR portfolio
What is Florian's strategy?
>Is their algorithm known?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/01/we-need-an-ind...
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
http://web.archive.org/web/20020506051802/www-diglib.stan...
Patent abolition and strategies (was: What is Florian's strategy?)
Patent abolition and strategies (was: What is Florian's strategy?)
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
Florian, is an important intent of your comments to help those that support patents by helping to remove resistance to software patents?
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
people do vote on issues without knowing the details if they trust (and like) the "experts" who would be making a case for why this matters to J Smith.
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We could still lose, since the bill is not yet law
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
when we win in court and in the bureaucracy (Bilski)
I suppose if we win in both the legislature and the courts somewhere in the same day
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
We have to keep working on abolition
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
BTW, I think IBM was against Turbo Hercules pushing Microsoft operating systems into the relevant markets. They stated that much.
And as a notable, TH could not have integrated with Microsoft OS using third party GPL code.
What is Florian's strategy?
> In addition to spurring the creation and publication of new expression, copyright law contains built-in First Amendment accommodations. See id., at 560, 105 S.Ct. 2218. First, it distinguishes between ideas and expression and makes only the latter eligible for copyright protection. Specifically, 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) provides: In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. As we said in Harper & Row, this idea/expression dichotomy strike[s] a definitional balance between the First Amendment and the Copyright Act by permitting free communication of facts while still protecting an author's expression. 471 U.S., at 556, 105 S.Ct. 2218 (internal quotation marks omitted). Due to this distinction, every idea, theory, and fact in a copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public exploitation at the moment of publication. See Feist, 499 U.S., at 349-350, 111 S.Ct. 1282.
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
I remember at least looking up their product on their website and having them tout it as having Windows integration.
I can't remember if the letters themselves stated explicitly of the Windows connection.
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
Or, Motorola could just join OIN, couldn't it? I presume Microsoft can't attack OIN directly?
What is Florian's strategy?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
Misinterpreting CopyrightA Series of Errors
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html
Against Intellectual Monopoly
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/agains...
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
e.g. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
or limitation e.g. "for limited Times"
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
intellectual property is guaranteed? Really?
Copyright has always been time-limited
WolWhat is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
> that should include patent licensing deals as a cost of doing business
> rather than an attack on freedom itself..
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
> and all, you could get them to liberate all those neat kernel performance
> patches they've been keeping to themselves all these years.
What is Florian's strategy?
Really? Golly. Perhaps, since you're all about advocating free software and all, you could get them to liberate all those neat kernel performance patches they've been keeping to themselves all these years. Isn't it all about sharing?
What is Florian's strategy?
Actually, those mythical patches are gawdawful on the whole and we don't want them. They're more about abusing the kernel in various ways to do specific things in a way that could be be best described as one off hacks. Mostly left in the dust by sensible upstream patches created by developers not on a short lease.
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
> themselves all these years"
What is Florian's strategy?
OK, guys, I'm starting to think that this conversation has gone far enough. Yes, I'm a little slow on the uptake. But maybe we could bring it to a close here?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
What is Florian's strategy?
Of course patents exist - and so does plague
Of course patents exist - and so does plague
Of course patents exist - and so does plague
This is inhuman excuse...
Don't hate the players, hate the game. :)
If you want to be able to make a living you have to deal with patents as they are part of the reality forced on all of us by the weight of government.
This is inhuman excuse...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
And if law is not always right then why can't we discuss cases where it's not right?
The NoSoftwarePatents cause has too little support from businesses. I explained in this recent LWN comment what it would take to convince politicians of abolition. So contrary to what some people sometimes allege, I don't just criticize but actually say what would be required.
This is probably the end of discussion...
>> > The NoSoftwarePatents cause has too little support from businesses.
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
>> I believe there's a good likelihood that Google is in the wrong here, not the law. Google's not being victimized here, there's a serious question about the propriety of their actions.
This is probably the end of discussion...
please cut out the bold
the italics for quotes is a good idea, but the bold is a bit jarring
please cut out the bold
Any logged-in user can change the displayed color of the purple text via My Account → Customize your account (the option is Quoted text (in email) color under Display preferencesnot to be confused with Quoted text preferences, which is the dark red color in articles), so if you don't like that color, just change it. ☺
please cut out the bold
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
(http://lwn.net/Articles/408287/ "If the game is deadly and unjust (like software patents game is) you must play it as little as possible...") was one a generalized approach to fighting bad law. I was responding to your clearly generalized statement that this is bad (http://lwn.net/Articles/408334/ "If a law is wrong, you need to get the law changed...")
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
P.S. Do you really need to bold and italicize everything you quote (it has a strong shouting impact which perhaps you do not intend)?
blockquote tag suitable for quoting text, although others surely have their own favourites.This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is probably the end of discussion...
This is inhuman excuse...
This is inhuman excuse...
I am sure we could find suitable analogies between progress destroying, industry debilitating, consumer taxing, freedom abridging entities like the above and software patents.
This is inhuman excuse...
This is inhuman excuse...
This is inhuman excuse...
It's simpler...
"I don't believe in patents!" does not constitute a defense against claims of patent infringement.
It's simpler...
On the contrary...
That doesn't sound like a defense, that sounds like a settlement offer.
In every single instance where Microsoft has brought them out, the parties have settled. This suggests pretty strongly that there is, indeed, something to them. They've never been shown to be invalid.
They are not required to submit to some sort of litmus test as a precondition for being treated with simple decency, something at which you're shown yourself to be a consistent and ongoing failure, as you've demonstrated right here, yet again.
On the contrary...
On the contrary...
Wol
It's simpler...
It's simpler...
It's simpler...
Of course patents exist - and so does plague
What is Florian's strategy?
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
"Well, apparently, adding a meeting request from a mobile device is."
I still maintain that attempting to patent something this obvious, and bringing a court case based on an obvious and non-novel patent, is fraud and the correct response is to bring a criminal prosecution against those involved.
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
I wouldn't be too surprised if the CPS decided such a prosecution was not in the public interest, took it over, and discontinued it, but that's just me being a nasty-minded cynic.
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Wol
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
The end of the small tech business seems near
The end of the small tech business seems near
The end of the small tech business seems near
Yup. Patents never made sense.
Yup. Patents never made sense.
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
If the US rules are so superior then why life expectancy is behind Cuba and Chile?
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?
The end of the small tech business seems near
The end of the small tech business seems near
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
Microsoft sues Motorola, citing Android patent infringement (ars technica)
I'm pointing out that as part and parcel of the idealized world of "software freedom" that RMS discusses in the essay I cite, he states very clearly that developers are overpaid, and in fact have unrealistic expectations about what they should get paid.