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| EFF Starts Patent-Busting Project |
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Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 03:18 PM EDT
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PubPat won't be all alone in the patent fight. EFF has announced that the Parker Family Foundation has donated $50,000 so that EFF can set up what they are calling EFF's Patent-Busting Project.
"We are concerned about the growing number of illegitimate software
and Internet patents," said Glenn Parker, trustee of The Parker Family
Foundation. "By investing in EFF, we know that we will be helping
to protect the rights of individuals, nonprofits and others that
have legitimate noncommercial uses of software and Internet
technology." They are seeking to attack overly broad or trivial patents which they believe are interfering with innovation with the result that technologies built on prior inventions "can be tied up in litigation for years".
"We seek to attack these types of patents," said Jason Schultz,
EFF staff attorney and project leader. "By doing so, we hope to
clear the way for the public to enjoy the benefits of these
technologies and help build the case for stronger reform to the
patent system. These patents strip our right to use publicly
available knowledge, disrupt ongoing research and innovation,
and threaten to shut down important community-based projects." The patents will be challenged under a legal process called reexamination, which you will remember is the process that PubPat successfully used recently with regard to the cotransformation patent. PubPat also recently asked the United States Patent and Trademark Office to revoke Microsoft's patent on the FAT File System, submitting prior art and saying that the patent is causing significant public harm. Reexamination is the way third parties to advocate affirmatively for the invalidity of the patents.
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| Authored by: Totosplatz on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 03:31 PM EDT |
Is there any way to examine patents before they are
approved? ---
All the best to one and all. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 03:47 PM EDT |
| Open-source proponents should be aware of the loaded vocabulary that is part of
the ideologies we are fighting. The word "Innovation" is touted by companies
that needs to profitable and to
sell more and more goods (physical or not) to a
finite set of customers. It is just
old ideas in a new set up.
Innovation is
nothing but organized obsolescence, it is a waste of resources at a time we are
keenly aware of the scarceness of them.
New does not necessarily mean
better.
Innovation is certainly not a goal or a mean for open-source. Purposeful
creativity is.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 03:53 PM EDT |
If a patent survives re-examination, isn't it
then much stronger against a later challenge?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Dan M on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 03:57 PM EDT |
Perhaps if the USPTO were now actually able to budget its' fees for its' own
use, http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0404/042904markup1.htm ,
the quality of the original review process might increase.
Having a well funded _citizens_ committee overlooking the process is icing on
the cake. Thanks Parker Family.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: inode_buddha on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 04:09 PM EDT |
n/t
---
"When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price." --
Richard M. Stallman[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Matt C on Saturday, May 29 2004 @ 05:06 PM EDT |
I love that the EFF is trying to help improve the review process, but I wonder
if the groklavians would weigh in on a more fundamental question (which I can't
put any better than E. Moglen does)
Has the notion of patent more or less worn out its usefulness? I don't mean for
software (although I mean especially for that). Personally I'm only
half-decided. But consider
-as Moglen points out, the notion of IP is attached to the rivalrousness of the
stuff that IP used to be attached to (namely, paper). When IP is contained in
nonrivalrous media (bitstreams)
-the notion of property itself was dreamt up to solve a problem: the efficient
and peaceful allocation of scarce goods, so freely replicatable data does not
naturally belong to the realm of property
...and so on. You get the idea and you've heard it before. I know we have to
take baby steps (e.g. improving the patent review process), but how many would
agree that these contradictions are the real root of the problem?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 30 2004 @ 02:29 AM EDT |
It's nice, but it's just sticking a finger in the dike. The number of trivial
patents out there is the next-best-thing to infinite.
In fact, the patent process - as applied to software - is inappropriate.
Copyright provides sufficient protection. Software patents only benefit
corporations who use them as anti-competition weapons.
The EU parliament has recognized this, and said "no" to allowing
software patents in Europe. Unfortunately, the parliament is pretty toothless,
and software patents may be imposed anyway (as the result of well-funded
lobbying at the highest levels).
If we can keep software patents out of Europe, this would be a lever to argue
for eliminating them in the USA.
In the meantime, I wonder if one could take some legal or regulatory action
against USPTO? The cost of contesting a huge number of trivial patents will be
huge. Surely the USPTO should bear the costs of re-examination, if it can be
shown that they should never have granted the patent in the first place?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: IharFilipau on Sunday, May 30 2004 @ 07:40 AM EDT |
Current spread of coverage on GrokLaw challenges even LWN.
Is it intentional test of what GrokLaw reader like to read?
More comment, means more attention paid to given topic. GrokLaw, GrokLine
- what is next?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Damonomad on Sunday, May 30 2004 @ 09:53 AM EDT |
Online dating is now patented! El Reg has
details
The US patent office has outdone itself this week,
awarding dating company eHarmony a patent covering online
matchmaking.
Damonomad
Psychoceramics: The study of
crackpots.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 30 2004 @ 11:49 AM EDT |
A patent not challenged is invalid ?.
The patent owners will do some thinking before they file a lawsuit over
patent(s) if they know it will be challenged. To not fight back, have fear rule
the day and do nothing, maybe pay settlements, or just give up, will bring more
lawsuits.
A bully picks on those he knows will not fight back. When the bully knows he
will be challenged (fight back), he is not so fast to pick.
A patent challenge win, does not make it better for the owner of the patent. In
fact, it brings questions about the patent and the basis used that it was
challenged on.
Eolas Technologies Inc, won their lawsuit after about 4 years in court. Won a
lawsuit over the largest company in the world (Microsoft). You would think that
a patent as Eolas's challenged would not be a big deal for Eolas to win ?, but
the outcry, the flood of prior art information was the key that proved to be the
greater power !.
Fear, and a patent not challenged are the greater dangers.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 30 2004 @ 07:52 PM EDT |
Attention - if you know more about patents than I do - which is likely - please
post corrections.
===================
Just to clarify:
The "'517 patent" is NOT a patent on FAT, which dates from the early
1980s or earlier.
It is a patent on a certain set of extensions which Microsoft uses to allowed
for long-filenames while preserving shorter ones.
IANAL, but I EXPECT the reexamination to do one of two things:
1) toss the patent altogether
2) narrow its scope so that it in effect only applies to Microsoft's filesystem.
I.e. it will be usable to prevent third parties from making an exact workalike,
but it will NOT prevent companies from implimenting other filesystems which
accomplish the same goal - having both short and long filenames stored in a
manner that, but for a few incompatibilities, are substantially similar to the
MS implimentation.
It's also possible that MS will realize the public relations disaster and
surrender or dedicate (make public domain) the patent.
By the way, the extensions to FAT are as to FAT as ext3 is to ext2 - both
involve extending a file system in a way substantially similar to what's been
done before (ext3 added journaling to ext2) but the PRECISE implimentation was
unique at the time and possibly patentable.
davidwr.geo -at- yahoo.com[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Night Flyer on Monday, May 31 2004 @ 12:40 AM EDT |
I believe that the 'corporate ego' of Microsoft is that the managers want the
corporation to be all things computer to all people.
(Over the past 35 years I've worked for two major corporations and have seen
this in both as well.)
Even though the FAT file system is old, (obsolete?) it still forms the base of
Win 9X. Further, I'll bet 9 of 10 people on the street would say 'Microsoft' if
you said who wrote/owns the FAT file system.
I hope PubPat wins, but I see a big stall coming from Microsoft. Microsoft is
geting a big scare from Lindows (Linspire) about its copyright protection for
the word "windows". I'll bet it is getting a big scare about the
possibility of losing some of its 'basic' patents such as those related to the
FAT file system.
Microsoft will put some high priced legal talent on this one.
------------------------------
Even if Microsoft wins, I'm still going to call those glass things on my house
"windows".
------------------------------
My Clan Motto: Veritas Vincit: Truth Conquers.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 31 2004 @ 02:50 AM EDT |
Professor Pamela Samuelson
has recently written a short paper, "Legal
ly Speaking: Why Reform the U.S. Patent System?"
(forthcoming in the 47
Communications of the ACM, June 2004).
In the paper, she argues that
computer professionals should support three "key" reforms of the patent system
that have been recently recommended by others:
[...] One
short column cannot hope to do justice to all of the recommendations in these
reports. But it is possible to highlight three key reforms that deserve
support.
First, the nonobviousness standard (by which the U.S. patent
system judges whether the patent applicant is an "inventor") should be
substantially reinvigorated. Second, there should be a more meaningful process
for reviewing "bad" patents so that they can be challenged in a more
cost-effective manner than by full-scale litigation. Third, the presumption in
favor of the validity of an issued patent should changed somewhat. At present, a
challenger must produce "clear and convincing" evidence of invalidity in order
to overcome the presumption of validity that attaches when a U.S. patent is
issued. The FTC recommends that a "preponderance" of evidence of invalidity
should suffice. Any one of these reforms would be an improvement, but the three
together would significantly improve patent quality and hence, public confidence
in the patent system.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 31 2004 @ 09:28 AM EDT |
The patent law could be changed so that if a patent is challenged and found to
be obvious or to small an advance to warrant a patent, then the expenses of the
challenging party must be paid by the owner of the rejected patent. There could
be provision which does not award costs to the challenger but still invalidates
the patent - the award of costs would be done whenever the patent is not even
close to be valid.
This would make it easier to challenge and help get rid of bad patents without
forcing the patent office to take the expense of using much more effort to
ensure that patents are valid. (However, each patent examiner should be held
accountable for the number of patents they issue which are found trivially
invalid to make sure that they feel some obligation to check patents out.)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 31 2004 @ 02:55 PM EDT |
I would think public ridicule to be most efficient for the
weakest patents. EFF provides a list of stupidest patents
and their owners/inventors and then everybody would start
commenting in each forum he/she usually participates (e.g.
around the water cooler) along these lines:
"Have you heard about the latest idiocy from the MoronS
Co.? They've wasted XXX$ on patenting YYY, a stupidest
thing I've ever heard of. I can immediatly think dozen
better ways to spend that amount of money. Hah, they must
really be losing their edge!" <general laughter>
Whenever somebody makes a weak patent make it seem like the
company's started a downward market spiral, lost it's
technological prowness and spending money on idiocies.
Public image is worth a lot of money and if it gets
tarnished with weak patents, companies start being more
wary of them.
Even better is if you can get access to pending patent
applications, there's a lot of really stupid stuff in those
which can be easily ridiculed.
Legal processes & money should be saved for overturning
worse / harder patents.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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