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What a load of ... | 145 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Thread
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 06:41 PM EDT
Please summarize the error->correction or s/error/correction/ in th Title box
before you post your comment, to make it easy to scan to see what needs to be
corrected and to avoid duplication of effort.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic threads
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 06:48 PM EDT
Please stay off topic in these threads. Well, you can stay on the topic of the
off topic that that you post to, but that topic should be off relative to the
topic of this article. However using HTML Formatted Mode to make your post look
pretty and have convenient clicky links would be spot on, even if the links take
people off site. As off and on are just 0 and 1, this is all just math and
should not be patented.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks Thread
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 07:00 PM EDT
Please post your comments about News Picks articles here. For everyone's
convenience please put the title of the News Picks article in the Title box of
your comment and include in the body of your comment the link to the article,
preferably posting in HTML Formatted mode, which will be useful to the reader
after the article has scrolled off the News Picks sidebar.

Hint: The geeklog software sometimes creates a broken link with long URLs in
HTML Formatted mode, but you can avoid that bug simply by inserting a space
before and after the text of the link, as in

<a href="http://example.com/foo"> Text for link </a>

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes transcripts here
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 07:04 PM EDT
Please post your transcriptions of Comes exhibits here, posted as Plain Old Text
but with full HTML markup (no <pre> tags to avoid using other simple
markup - that won't work) to make it easy for PJ to copy and paste.

[ Reply to This | # ]

PJ, Transcript HTML should be in your mailbox
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 08:44 PM EDT
PJ,

Check your email, I sent the HTML of the transcript to you just now.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'll do 1212
Authored by: Steve Martin on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 08:55 PM EDT
PJ, if you like, I'll do 1212 (the JMOL motion).


---
"When I say something, I put my name next to it." -- Isaac Jaffe, "Sports Night"

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • I'll do 1212 - Authored by: PJ on Friday, June 22 2012 @ 10:32 PM EDT
Set the WayBack machine... that was my first try at reporting for Groklaw.
Authored by: mirrorslap on Saturday, June 23 2012 @ 01:52 AM EDT

and my first trip down the rabbit hole of Oracle's twisted view of "reality", which was truly mind-bending. It's really hard for me to record things that make no sense; there's no logical frame on which the fabric can hang... I hope that there are no glaring errors in what I reported... hopefully just holes.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The price of everything and the value of nothing.
Authored by: Ian Al on Saturday, June 23 2012 @ 04:58 AM EDT
My brain overheats and closes down whenever I read the word 'statistics'.
However, I think I am getting a handle on the argument. I needed the judge's
expert math report to get near.

Oracle seems to argue that the PatVal study is large and comprehensive and
demonstrates the distribution of patent value in any randomly selected patent
portfolio. That distribution is skewed. They have two other reports that
demonstrate a similar skewing, although at the ends of the distribution, the
actual figures tend to diverge in a very significant way.

The judge points out that Cockburn's report is using the upper end of the
distribution as a general pattern of skeweyness of a patent portfolio value to
deduce the values of the Oracle portfolio, but that this is a very unreliable
and unproven part of the curve.

Google point out that the Oracle portfolio set analysed is not a random
portfolio. It is the worldwide 14,000 winnowed down to 1,300 that might be
relevant (i.e., not a randomly selected patent portfolio as represented by the
European PatVal study).

Oracle's rejoinder is that they did not know the answer to how many U.S.-issued
patents Sun had in 2006, but that they selected all those related to Java,
bytecode, or had Mr. Gosling or Mr. Fresko cited as inventor. They only selected
those issued prior to 2006.

That breaks the link with the European PatVal study because most of those
patents would not have been software patents and all of the Oracle patents were
selected (i.e., non-random) from solely software patents). Cockburn cannot
demonstrate that PatVal has any relevance to this specially selected set of
patents. That is particularly true when the ends of the distribution are being
considered.

The fact that the relevance of the PatVal report to the specially selected
Oracle patent set is not explained at all in the expert report renders it
technically valueless. That has nothing to do with the general rules of expert
reports and everything to do with this particular report.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle v. Google March 2, 2012 Hearing on 3rd Cockburn Report - Transcript ~pj Updated 2Xs
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 23 2012 @ 07:39 PM EDT

PJ said

If the Groklaw community is making fun of your case, maybe you would be wise to seriously consider if they are right.

I would go further. If Florian Mueller says you are in with a chance, panic!

[ Reply to This | # ]

What a load of ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 24 2012 @ 03:00 AM EDT
Nonetheless, it cannot be the case that the reasons why the methodology is sound have to be disclosed in the report itself.
Uh, that is for established methodology. Not methodology made up on the spot for the current case.

The judge does a good job of calling the bluff. But he seems exceptional. More often than not, I expect this sort of pseudoscientific babble to pass scrutination, if not by the judge, then by the jury.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Best bit of entertainment all week
Authored by: globularity on Sunday, June 24 2012 @ 05:15 AM EDT
Poor Mr Norton was totally outclassed, I knew where the judge was going and
watching Mr Norton waffle on and arrive back at the same point was hilarious.
Lucky the Judge knew more than a little about statistics, lesser judges would
have swallowed that rubbish.

The funniest bit was when Mr Norton thinking it was smart reduced the sample
size to one, a footgun moment.

---
Windows vista, a marriage between operating system and trojan horse.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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