Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Palm says NTP is suing on 'patents of doubtful validity'
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | It concluded: "Palm respects legitimate intellectual property rights,
> | but will defend itself vigorously against the attempted misuse of the
> | patent and judicial systems to extract monetary value for rights to
> | patents that may ultimately have no value at all."
> `----
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/07/palm_fights_ntp_patent_claim/
It's worth noting that Palm went directly to the Patent office and
challenged the patents directly. They provided evidence of prior art
and helped to establish that the NTP patent claims were in fact not
"original" but were based on technology that wasn't even being used.
The NTP patents were based on direct paging and relay for pagers. The
Palm and Blackberry technology are based on send-mail and UUCP style
transfers, which are over 20 years old.
Blackberry paid $600+ million because the threat of service termination
had cost them more than the amount paid to NTP.
Keep in mind that NTP is essentially a legal firm (whiplash lawyers)
protecting patents filed by "kitchen table software companies" - often
individuals claiming that their software was original and unique, and
simply not doing any research into "prior art" other than checking
Patent Office archives at a time when the Patent Office prior art
archives were grossly difeciant.
Many companies, like IBM, Kodak, and even Microsoft, are listing as
much prior art as possible in each patent application, even if that
might mean that the patent will be rejected.
The key is that all of this prior art, including nearly 50 years of
technology developed by IBM, nearly 30 years of OSS technology
including UNIX, BSD, CP/M, and others, are also being referenced. The
irony is that by putting this information on file, it becomes easier to
challenge patents that have already been granted, without a court
hearing. When a patent that has been granted can be demonstrated as
not original by referencing prior art cited in subsequent applications,
or can be demonstrated as being intuitively derived by undergraduate
students doing classroom assignments based on publicly available
information, it's much easier to nullify the patent.
There has been a big push to make patent applications subject to "peer
review". The application would be made public when it is filed, which
means that all potentially affected people, or any other interested
party, could submit proof of prior art and this information could be
used by the patent office to reject the patent application.
NTP represents the worst case scenario in patent law. Some individual
forms his own corporation, brings in NTP as a "partner" or major
stockholder, and they jointly file a patent on technology that just
doesn't happen to have been previously patented or listed in other
patent applications.
> Supreme Court To Review Microsoft Patent Case
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Is Microsoft Liable?
> |
> | Microsoft argued that it had sent one master copy of Windows
> | overseas on a so-called golden disk to be copied onto PCs
> | sold outside the U.S. Microsoft shouldn't be liable for
> | patent infringement for the hundreds of thousands of
> | copies of Windows made from that master disk, its lawyers argued.
> `----
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127698-c,legalissues/article.html
The big questions in this case may boil down to, "did Microsoft get
license fees for the copies they authorized?" and "did Microsoft
directly authorize the copying from the gold Master?".
The interesting thing in this case, is that Microsoft isn't contesting
the patent itself, but rather whether they, or the licensee, should be
held liable for the patent royalties. The appeals court ruled against
Microsoft, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. Worth
noting, the US Attorney General has filed papers in favor of Microsoft
(more political favors for a big contributor?).
Generally, the Supreme Court hears two kinds of cases, those in which
they want to uphold the appellate court, to establish a national global
precedent, and those in which they want to overturn the appeals court,
because they want to establish a different legal precedent.
The Supreme Court rarely hears cases simply because the verdict "wasn't
fair". The Supreme Court is concerned with "due process of law".
> Attempt to patent form-filling program rejected
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | "It would have been a disaster if Macrossan was said to
> | be patentable, because every business method under the
> | sun would have been patentable," said Rufus Pollock,
> | director of the Foundation for a Free Information
> | Infrastructure (FFII), a not-for-profit organisation
> | dedicated to the development of information goods
> | for public benefit.
> |
> | The Convention's rules do allow patents to be granted
> | for hardware which has been programmed -- but that
> | condition only exists in select circumstances.
> |
> | Earlier this year, Appeal Court judge Sir Robin Jacob
> | criticised the US for allowing software to be patented.
> `----
> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39284380,00.htm
Several countries are now considering nullification of patents in their
countries, primarily because the patent office procedures are so
totally messed up. Look at the Blackberry case. Blackberry may have
paid $600 million for patents which weren't valid in the first place.
The problem was that Blackberry didn't have access to the resources
demonstrating that these technologies were in fact not patentable -
because they were based on prior art that was over 20 years old, that
was developed by undergraduate students.
Countries that have implemented software patents have opened their
archives to all prior art, and have often found that patents issued by
the United States were not valid in their countries. In some cases,
prior art could be identified using Google.
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