Seriously?

Posted Aug 12, 2025 7:33 UTC (Tue) by chris_se (subscriber, #99706)
In reply to: Seriously? by Wol
Parent article: StarDict sends X11 clipboard to remote servers

> that's a classic case of industrial espionage!

Nah, without any corroborating evidence, Hanlon's Razor applies. The feature itself will be considered useful by some people and my guess is that the authors don't care that much about privacy to begin with, but not because of malice, but more because of a different perspective.

Doesn't make the impact of this issue any better, but I also don't think this kind of rhetoric is helpful at all.

Seriously?

Posted Aug 12, 2025 8:37 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> Doesn't make the impact of this issue any better, but I also don't think this kind of rhetoric is helpful at all.

Considering that the impact COULD be severe economic damage (remember, the US is unusual, in the rest of the world mere disclosure of economic secrets destroys any value), I don't think I'm being over the top.

If I (as an outsider) notice that document, I can use it to block any patent application, for example. Okay, espionage implies intent, but the end result is near as dammit identical.

Cheers,
Wol

Seriously?

Posted Aug 12, 2025 11:26 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

> (remember, the US is unusual, in the rest of the world mere disclosure of economic secrets destroys any value)

If you're referring to the "first to file" policy used in the rest of the world…the US joined that party in 2013[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_...

Seriously?

Posted Aug 12, 2025 14:40 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

No the rest of the world does NOT (and mostly never has, to the best of my knowledge) use "first to file".

The rest of the world has used "filing must be the first publication" - if you accidentally let slip your filing documents today, and file tomorrow, that slip counts as prior art and will invalidate your application. It's happened! ("Publication" meaning "making available to the public", not necessarily our normal meaning of the word of "printing copies and selling them". Which includes accidentally losing a copy on the bus ...)

As far as RoW is concerned, "first to file" is just an accidental byproduct of the first publication rule - if my application pre-dates yours, any conflict is resolved in my favour not because I filed before you, but because I published before you. That's why there's discussion every now and then about a "journal of inventions" - the whole point of which is to prevent any future patent applications on those ideas because of "first to publish".

The problem is that if patent examiners mostly read only patent applications, they may well grant invalid patents because they are unaware of prior publications.

Cheers,
Wol