On Jul 15, 12:18 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
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> Patent Gridlock Suppresses Innovation
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Our patent system for most innovations has become patently absurd. It's a
> | disincentive at a time when we expect software and other technology companies
> | to be the growth engine of the economy. Imagine how much more productive our
> | information-driven economy would be if the patent system lived up to the
> | intention of the Founders, by encouraging progress instead of suppressing it.
> `----
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121599469382949593.html?mod=googlenew...
Keep in mind that software couldn't usually be patented, because it
was simply an algorythm that had been coded into a computer. An
algorythm wasn't patentable.
There were some very rare exceptions to this, primarily when a patent
applicant could implement the same function in both hardware (using
integrated circuts or gates wired together) and software on an
embedded computer. RSA encryption and Limpel,Ziv,Welch (LZW)
compression, were examples of this approach to patents.
Attorneys for the applicants challenged the Judge and the patent
office to tell the hardware implementation from the software
implementation. The precedent was set, and a few software "devices"
were patented.
During the Clinton Administration, in 1994, the Republicans decided to
open up the patent office to software patents. Applicants could
describe the algorythm as a "device" with a specific function, which
was the "Claim" and implementation of that device was a specific
algorythm implemented in specific code.
The problem was that the first computer software algorythms were
developed in the 1940s, and the patent office made NO attempt to
catalog this prior art. As a result, you had people who were trying
to "Patent" the "Heap Sort".
In order to get as much of this prior art into the public archives as
possible, companies like IBM, Kodak, HP, Sun, and even Red Hat, began
to file thousands of patent applications every year, listing as much
prior art as they possibly could, in "High Quality" patent
applications. It didn't matter whether the patent was granted or not,
the mention of the prior art made the prior art part of the patent
office archive.
The irony was that there were people trying to sue IBM over technology
it had invented in the 1960s as "patent violations". The problem is
that patent search attorneys typically don't look at all that prior
art on file, unless it's included in the title of the patent
application.
One of the biggest repositories of software was Open Source Software.
Several Billion lines of code had been written, implementing millions
of "devices" which patent trolls seemed more than willing to try and
patent. In some cases, the patent applicant had a "kitchen table
software company" with no tangible assets, and the lawyers would
remain willfully ignorant, even discouraging the applicant from making
too many disclosures of prior art.
> There are still some criminal-minded companies that seek to exploit this system
> of absurdity.
When you can deliberately engage in fraud to get the patent, and you
can deliberately engage in willful nondisclosure of the prior art,
it's pretty obvious that the criminal elements are going to get
involved. A whiplash lawyer might make a few thousand dollars on a
personal injury case, and will have to engage in a huge list of
motions. That same lawyer, representing a fraudulently obtained
patent can file a lawsuit for hundreds of millions of dollars, settle
for 6-10 $million, and walk off with up to 1/3rd as a contingency
fee. The company offering the settlement doesn't even have to admit
that the patent is legitimate, their primary motivation is to avoid
any actions like injunctions and prolonged delays of strategic
products while the judge and/or jury discover that the claims are
fraudulent.
Many companies, like Red Hat and Novell, are building "patent
umbrellas" that protect them from any future patent claims by large
number of patent portfolio holders. They often trade patents as a way
of expanding that umbrella. The goal isn't to extort money from
people who use their patents, but rather to prevent extortionists from
attempting to get money for a patent on software that has been
previously developed by other people, not the patent holder.
Recently, the patent office is getting much more open to patent
challenges. When a patent holder attempts to collect on a patent, the
defendant can pull up archives of prior art, and not only get the
patent revoked, but even have the application declared fraudulent.
When an application is declared fraudulent, the patent holder may find
that it has to return any cash collected from any other defendants.
> Related:
>
> Who is the world's biggest patent troll?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
> | answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
> | of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
> | $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
> | universities in Asia."
> `----
That's funny. in the US, if a device is invented by an undergraduate
at a university, using publicly available information, the device
can't be patented. This was one of the reasons that so much BSD, GPL,
and Athena (SGML, HTML, XML, X11, ...) software was developed by
funding undergraduate programs. The whole point of providing joint
funding of these projects was that none of the sponsor companies could
"own" the intellectual property exclusively. The NSF was also a big
research project which funded student development, until they revised
their licenses unilaterally, allowing Microsoft to make proprietary
extensions without the permission of the developers. Keep in mind
that wen Prodigy tried to remove the address bar to make users of
their browser "captive", the Mosaic developer community threatened to
revoke their permission to use key innovations ranging from
authentication and cookies to https.
> http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news...
>
> Playing Microsoft Patent Poker
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
> | that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
> | Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
> | attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
> | of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
> | Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.
That is really funny. Linux has had VOIP since the early 1990s. Unix
has had electronic switching of voice over layer 4 (like TCP) since
the 1980s.. Nortel has been doing VOIP since the mid 1980s. MCI had
"IP on Everything" in 1993. But Microsoft seems to think that they
are the "Innovators" of VOIP. That would be really amusing,if it
weren't for the fact that the fraud and extortion tactics will cost
$billions in litigation and defense.
It's quite likely that Microsoft won't sue AT&T, MCI, or any of the
other big players directly. They will find some struggling VOIP third-
rate competitor, and arrange venture capital funding from anonymous
"investors" to pay for a long, public, protracted court battle in
which all of the claims will be proven false, and some of the claims
will be proven to be fraudulent attempts to claim ownership of
technology originally developed by the defendents. The company will
then file for bankruptcy, while the officers walk off with a few
hundred $million from the "pump and dump" of a lawsuit that they knew
they couldn't prove.
That's what has happened with SCO and their attempt to sue IBM. The
only claims IBM didn't ask to have dismissed was intellectual property
it already owned. IBM then attempted to establish a paper trail back
to deeper pockets, and remove the insulation so that they could
collect directly from Microsoft executives and other key "Investors"
in the venture capital funds as well as executives who offered to
"back up" the "investment".
Now, Novell and IBM are pushing to have the court allow them to
collect from these "deep pockets" rather than the SCO "shell company".
I suspect that if Obama gets elected in 2008, Daryl McBride might be
facing criminal charges including stock fraud, extortion, and probably
a few other criminal charges.
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