Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Microsoft Deems Emotiflags Patent-Worthy
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft said you could count on them to improve patent quality.
Sounds like they are out to patent every software "device" created
since 1977 that hasn't already been patented - because the Patent
office doesn't have record of it's prior existence.
Perhaps this is what Microsoft means by "patent quality". Essentially,
they are going to go in with their chain-saws and clear-cut all of the
national forests as quickly as they possibly can, "because nobody was
living there".
The whole process has made the whole software patent process a farce.
The US patent office has become the laughing stock of the rest of the
world, and many countries have openly declared that US patent would not
be honored or enforced.
The whole ill-concieved software patent process was drafted by the new
Republican congress as soon as they got control of the house of
representatives. Some really intense lobbying by a very large software
company convinced even the moderate Democrats and the president that
this was a good idea.
The entire lack of ANY provision to audit existing prior art and make
sure that squatters didn't try to patent 40 year old technology
developed for and buy the united states government, was completely
ignored.
Aw hell, let's just turn the national forest over to the clear-cutters,
turn the Alaskan oil fields over to Haliburton, and just make
Haliburton the sole broker supplier of all military hardware to be used
anywhere in the world. Zeig Heil herr Cheney!!! Zeig Heil Herr
Gates!!!
There seems to be a move to nominate Bill Gates as Presidential
Dictator of the United States. Perhaps Bush has some plans to do
something extraordinary before Congress is sworn in in January?
> | For an example of how they're raising the bar on innovation, check
> | out this just-published patent application for Emotiflags, which
One thing that Microsoft probably could have patented was that comic
book chat service that came with Windows 95. That was really fun. The
users created their own characters, and talked to each other. Their
comments were displayed as bubbles. The characters changed facial
expressions based on selections made by the end user.
Not sure why Microsoft retired that software, since it was one of the
few really original things Microsoft actually did which really did open
up a new market.
But before long, AOL and Yahoo and GAIM were all offering chat clients,
and several of these had emoticons which displayed graphical versions
of favorite emoticons.
The emoticons themselves were created by ARPA users back in the early
1980s, perhaps even the late 1970s, and by 1983, there were regular
repostings of about 50 different emoticons, some of which have been
lost because of their obscurity.
> | Microsoft explains solves the problem of indicating an emotion
> | associated with an email message. At the risk of infringing on the
> | patent, this one Makes Me Mad!"
:-(
Bill Gates = >:->
(just kidding)
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/16/038207&from=rss
> Yesterday:
> Microsoft patent hints at pay-as-you-go OS
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | A Microsoft patent application from June 2005, published only today,
> | titled "System and method for delivery of a modular operating system"
> | may signal a fundamental change for what an operating systems stands
> | for and how it is sold.
>
> http://www.istartedsomething.com.nyud.net:8080/20061215/pay-as-you-go-os-patent/
Microsoft may be engaging in defensive patents. By filing an
application, even if it's incomplete, no one else can file for a
similar patent at a later date. The problem is that the patents are
not publicly disclosed until they are granted, which means that the
originality of the patent can't be challenged until AFTER the patent is
granted.
> Fun with Google Patent Search: Why does the maker of Windows hold a patent on
> a door hinge?
My understanding is that a former employee of Microsoft patented this
device, as part of a building project. Since he was a Microsoft
employee, Microsoft had all rights to ANY intellectual property rights
- which meant that the guy couldn't file a patent application unless
Microsoft sponsored it.
I'm surprised that the patent was actually granted, given that it's
very similar to technology that is very old. But again, the patent
office grants patents to the first filer. There is the risk that a
patent could be challenged in court, and a prior inventor could prove
that he produced the prior art, and the patent could be awarded to the
earlier inventor even though he never filed the application.
Imagine the horror if Microsoft tried to patent the drop-down menu, and
suddenly the FSF proved that this was an implementation of their prior
art, used on emacs, and that Richard Stallman was the new patent owner,
and Stallman being who he is, would demand that all source code to
Windows and any software that used a Drop-down menu must now be
published in source code format.
There has been a move to grant patents to "First to file" but not to
"First to Invent". This means that if a patent is granted on prior
art, the owner of that prior art can nullify the patent, but he cannot
take ownership of the patent. The patent would then become public
domain.
There are some who have begun to feel that the whole software patent
process has become such a disaster that they would like to see ALL
software patents put into public domain.
Ironically, even the GPL-3 only prevents enforcement of patents on
GPL-3 licensed software.
If someone took GPL-3 software and released it as proprietary code, not
only would it be a copyright violation, but it would also be a patent
violation.
Keep in mind that there is a huge body of technology which has been
licensed under OSS licenses, including some, such as the GPL, which
pre-date the laws allowing easier software patents. The risk of
Richard Stallman and the FSF suddenly owning thousands of patents is
very real.
The problem is that there are also millions of lawyers who are willing
to file on behalf of people who ignorantly or deliberately claim to
have "invented" technology they know is not original, and the patent
office, lacking records of the prior art, and not disclosing the
application until the patent is granted, will often grant patents to
such fraudulent applications. Since the penalties for fraudulent
applications are minimal, and the potential rewards can be huge
(Blackberry paid $400 million for e-mail?), all the lawyer has to do is
make sure that the applicant does not tell him that this was something
he copied out of e-macs or X11 source code, or GNOME code.
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The patent was granted in 1998 and received a dribble of publicity
> | in 1999, but I'm hard pressed to find any meaningful explanation for
> | a door hinge being in the control of the company that made Windows famous.
> http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9721
You would have to be a Microsoft employee to really understand this
one. Remember, ANY idea, software related or not, that is developed by
a Microsoft employee - belongs to Microsoft . Remember that HP had
seen the Apple, because Steve Wazniak was working for Apple at the
time. Paul Allen was an employee of MITS when he hired Bill Gates as
a contractor to do "Work for Hire" for MITS. Suddenly Bill shows up
with incorporation papers (probably created by his father), claiming
that he, and Paul Allen, were employees of Micro-soft, and that
Micro-soft was the true owner of BASIC, and that MITS had pirated and
promoted the piracy of Micro-soft software.
Shortly after that, Bill Gates was arrested, his father flew to
Albequerque, and after quickly negotiating an "Butch Cassidy and
Sundance" deal with someone, both Gates and his father left New Mexico
for Bellview. To my knowledge, Bill Gates has not been in New Mexico
since then. The charges were sealed, the records were expunged, and
the charges and settlement cannot be unsealed easily. Appearantly,
they were about to be unsealed by New Mexico in the second remedy
hearing, which is why this was the first state approached by Microsoft
was New Mexico.
Perhaps Judge Jackson was right, and Bill Gates WAS a convicted
criminal.
Jackson only said that, in his opinion, Bill Gates was a criminal.
The appeals court did not dispute this. Only the fact that Jackson had
granted
an interview with a reporter before the final judgement was issued.
There was probably method to the madness, but Judge Jackson hasn't said
much about it since then.
> A couple of weeks back:
> Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims
> | that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking
> | almost any participation by the small business community.
There is a provision in the US revised patent law which allows
applicants working for small businesses to file an innitial claim with
the patent office for something like $40. This is not the final patent
application, but does establish "first filing". If the patent
application is not completed within a certain period of time, the claim
can never be patented.
Of couse, there are lots of Ambulance Chaser Whiplash-lawyers who have
found this to be even better than phony insurance claims. These are
the same guys who filed lawsuits on behalf of people claiming to be on
board a bus when it was hit by a police car. The only problem was that
the defendent was able to prove that the bus was completely empty at
the time, and that the accident had been staged. The irony is that
only the claimants, not their lawyers, were convicted of insurance
fraud.
> | Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for
> | competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by
> | large corporations and the patent industry.
It's that second part that gets interesting. The patent industry is
actually a pretty big organization, and includes lots of unethical
lawyers who file bogus applications and then file bogus claims, in
hopes of a quick settlement.
Because the burdon of proof for fraudulent patent claims is very
difficult, it's a low risk scam. And the problem is that corporate
interests have to file defensive patent applications - often hoping
that they WON'T be awarded a patent, which includes every even remotely
related piece of intellectual property or claim of usefulness. The
goal is not to be awarded the patent, but to make as much information
as possible part of the public record. This may have been what
Microsoft was trying to do when it filed for a patent on emoticons?
If IBM was filing for the patent, they would have included nearly every
reference to emoticons made in the last 50 years, including the
earliest string of ":-)" they could find, they would include every
reference to alternate ways to display those icons, they might even
include the picture poster created about 15 years ago, and references
to display of text strings as icons. The goal is to demonstrate that
anyone who had access to this documentation of prior art, which was
widely available, could have created the emoticon. If the Patent
office is still stupid enough to grant the patent, IBM would leave it
in the vault, just in case some whiplash lawyer filed a lawsuit
claiming infringement of their icon patent.
On the other hand, defensive patents are great bargaining chips.
Signing an agreement that says "I won't enforce my patents if you don't
enforce yours" is a great way to create an even bigger defensive
perimeter. If you have non-enforcement agreements with 50-60 different
companies, and some whiplash lawyer tries to file an infringement
claim, you can now pull out all that other intellectual property in
your defense, and put this guy in the precarious position of filing a
fraudulent patent claim. Often, the complaint will be dropped
immediately.
> | [...]
> | The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and
> | Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report.
> | But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the
> | report in any way
Keep in mind that patents are a huge industry for lawyers, and most
legistlators, politicians, and judges - are lawyers. Quick-and-cheap
filings and quick-and-cheap settlements are quite common, though often
disappointing. Still, if a patent lawyer can file for a patent on
behallf of a "squatter" - file enforcement claims against 50 companies,
and get quick-and-dirty settlements from even 10 of those companies -
it becomes a profitable industry.
Keep in mind that even with no ability to successfully prove any
specific claim of intellectual property rights infringment by Linux,
SCO was able to collect extortion money (I mean quick-and-dirty
settlements) from about 20 campanies - including Microsoft, who paid at
least $7 million for licenses to UNIX.
It wasn't until insurance fraud laws were stiffened up that ambulance
chasers were filing bogus claims, often having "special" doctors who
could find fractures and injuries in places no other doctor would see.
Even the defenden'ts insurance company doctor couldn't see the damage.
But the cost of a full trial, and the risk of Jury "nullification", a
jury ignoring the facts, the law, and figuring they'd just give the
"Nice old Lady" a bunch of money because she was "too sweet" to be
denied.
> | [...]
> | Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community,
> | said that he found the report useless: participants were told that
> | all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only
> | those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
> `----
This isn't such a new tactic. Remember, the Antitrust settlement
indicated that anyone could file a complaint and that complaint would
be recorded, investigated, and reported to the court. Instead, each
review hearing has been "there were a bunch of complaints but the
committee decided that only 2 of them had any merit, and we have
already been dealing with this".
All records of what the complaints were, who filed them, what was being
questioned, and what deliberation process had been used to deterimine
the merit, were not made part of ANY official record.
Again, the problem is that we had lawyers who had recieved huge sums of
money as part of the settlement, who were supposedly monitoring the
complaints. The Compliance officer was making a huge sum of money from
the Marketing department - essentially to ignore his duties as a
compliance officer. Meanwhile, Microsoft was making huge contributions
to numerous non-profit organizations, including the Gates foundation,
who were then disbursing funds to other nonprofit organizations which
were then funding political activities such as public service
announcements, and even making direct contributions to political
campaigns.
The money laundering operation was complex and well disguised, rivaling
any operation used by any organized crime syndicate.
The end result was that, even in the face of ovewwhelming condemnation
by the federal court, the appeals court, and public confessions of
criminal activities including fraud, extortion, blackmail, sabotage,
and obstruction of justice, during the hearings, the Ashcroft DOJ
decided to take divestiture off the table, accepted a swiss cheese
settlement, and let Microsoft choose their own compliance officer and
technical committee. In effect, Microsoft was able to completely
ignore the law.
Investigations into the funding operation of the Republican party,
especially in Texas, Abramov, Tom DeLey, and contributions during the
early stages of the 2000 primaries, has shown that Microsoft
essentially "bought" George Bush.
> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/99155/big-businesses-boast-of-patent-benefits-for-small-businesses.html
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