|
Authored by: kawabago on Friday, December 07 2012 @ 10:56 PM EST |
Why are Microsoft products so weird? That's what you get when
chairs are landing on employees.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, December 07 2012 @ 11:06 PM EST |
The
Newspick is here , but the paranoid and humor impaired
should not read
the comments.
Maybe a working draft has leaked, but when it's
finished
it will be found
here
.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
Authored by: SilverWave on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 06:14 AM EST |
Christmas gift for
someone you hate: Windows
8
Hmm had my first Win8 case this week looks just like Win7
but
they have hidden the buttons.
Win key+X gets anything you need for
support purposes.
If you need a quick start this is good:
Learn
Windows 8 in 3 minutes
(OK, it's really 4)--- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 08:24 PM EST |
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/154874/uspto-invalidates-all-
claims-of-steve-jobs-multi-touch-patent/40#post_2243255[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
Authored by: dio gratia on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 08:20 PM EST |
Society Reaps Enormous Benefits from
Software Patents, BSA Argues in Amicus Filing.
V. The Form Of
The Patent Claim Does Not Affect Patent Eligibility.
Section 101 makes
eligible for patent protection “any new and useful process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement
thereof.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. Whether a software innovation is claimed as a method,
system, or storage medium does not alter its patent eligibility. Indeed, the
Supreme Court has been careful not to “interpret[] patent statutes in ways that
make patent eligibility depend simply on the draftman’s art.” Mayo, 132 S. Ct.
at 1294 (quotation omitted).
When software dictates a means for
implementation of a specific innovation using computer implementation, it may
qualify as a “process” under Section 101. See Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188. Similarly,
computer software may qualify as a “machine.” Software that directs a computer
to per- form a specific function “creates a new machine, because a general
purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is
programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program
software.” In re Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1545. The form of the patent claim does not
alter an innovation’s eligibility pursuant to Section 101.
Feel
like you've been bait-and-switched? From Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63
(1972) (whence the MPEP 2106 refrain
that software per se cannot be patented comes from):
It is
conceded that one may not patent an idea. But in practical effect that would be
the result if the formula for converting BCD numerals to pure binary numerals
were patented in this case. The mathematical formula involved here has no
substantial practical application except in connection with a digital computer,
which [409 U.S. 63, 72] means that if the judgment below is affirmed, the
patent would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect
would be a patent on the algorithm itself.
It may be that the patent laws
should be extended to cover these programs, a policy matter to which we are not
competent to speak. The President's Commission on the Patent System 4 rejected
the proposal that these programs be patentable: 5
"Uncertainty now
exists as to whether the statute permits a valid patent to be granted on
programs. Direct attempts to patent programs have been rejected on the ground of
nonstatutory subject matter. Indirect attempts to obtain patents and avoid the
rejection, by drafting claims as a process, or a machine or components thereof
programmed in a given manner, rather than as a program itself, have confused the
issue further and should not be permitted.
"The Patent Office now cannot
examine applications for programs because of a lack of a classification
technique and the requisite search files. Even if these were available, reliable
searches would not be feasible or economic because of the tremendous volume of
prior art being generated. Without this search, the patenting of programs would
be tantamount to mere registration and the presumption of validity would be all
but nonexistent.
It would seem the BSA agrees with the
Federal Circuit, just not in this particular case:
IV. The Software
At Issue Here Is Not Patentable.
Assessed under this framework, the software at
issue here is not patentable.
The claims involve the concept of credit
intermediation — an idea that has existed in non-digital form for millennia. See
CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd., 685 F.3d 1341, 1344-46 (Fed. Cir.
2012); id. at 1357- 58 (Prost, J., dissenting). It is plain that credit
intermediation long pre- existed computer implementation, and that it is a
process that can be per- formed in the human mind, or by a human with pencil and
paper.
In addition, the computer aspect of the claims here does not add
anything of substance to the mental process at issue. The computer
implementation of the abstract idea is not limited in any fashion. And there is
no suggestion that the process here is in anyway dependent upon computer
technology to accomplish the directed end. To the contrary, as Judge Prost
indicated in dissent, the patent claims here would have the effect of preempting
the abstract idea of credit intermediation in its entirety. CLS
24
Bank Int’l,
685 F.3d at 1359 (Prost, J., dissenting). This is an archetypal example of what
the Supreme Court in Mayo identified as an unpatentable usage of an abstract
idea or law of nature — “simply stat[ing] the law of nature while adding the
words ‘apply it’”; or, as here, “use a computer.”
You could get
the distinct impression this patent is being thrown off the sleigh for the
wolves to consume. The only colorable distinction between CLS Bank and software
as "a “process” under Section 101" is that CLS is a simulation (of an abstract)
while say Apple's
7,469,381 patent (claim 1) is a process controlling the display of a
document. Said display a transitory signal, not resulting in any transformation
of matter. Contrast this with the process from the quoted Diamond v. Diehr, where the
software was used to control curing synthetic rubber, reducing a thing to a
different state. The rejection of point of novelty also explains why the '381
claim 19 could be considered invalid, software on a substrate over claim
1.
This subtle bending of citation also so seemingly prevalent in
adversarial filing in this particular instance reminds me of a quote from the
movie The Blues
Brothers (the last statement by Elwood in the highlighted
section).
Maybe the BSA could get invited to present oral arguments and get
allegorically smacked with a ruler?
From the title of the BSA website post,
one could do worse than to look up the definition of society in a
dictionary. It's a particular word who's meaning defines the BSA's intent with
the amicus brief. The intent to embrace one or more societies the BSA considers
itself to be a member thereof and with having common cause. As for the rest of
us, please don't queer
the pitch.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 02:18 AM EST |
Given the low availability of these "Surface" machines, how in the
world does anyone expect good sales? This feel like Microsoft setting themselves
up for disappointment :p. The other Windows 8 based tablets on the other hand,
who knows? They will have to wait until January to even see any numbers on
those, though I'm not expecting it to sell well.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|