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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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Another idea... | 661 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Now there's an idea...
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 12:57 PM EDT
Hold the USPTO financially liable for damages due to having issued a patent
later found to be invalid.
That would give them the incentive they so obviously lack to do a proper job the
first time around.
I'm sure this will never happen but I like the idea...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Go after the applicants and owners as well.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 28 2013 @ 01:39 PM EDT
The applicant who signed the request for the patent should be fined as well.

Better yet, there should be some agreement language on the application form
stating something to the effect of, "If you deceive us into giving you a
bogus patent, you will be charged a fine upon discovery of the patents
invalidity in addition to any legal fees that might arising out of litigation
over this patent. You will also have to pay back any and all monies transferred
to you from any licensing of an invalidated patent."

And then, if the patent transfers hands, that responsibility should be shared
between the applicant and the new owner/s.

But most importantly, "This agreement survives bankruptcy."

I would be willing to bet people would think twice about ripping off the purpose
of our patent system.

(Don't hate the game. Hate the cheaters.)


[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Another idea
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 06:45 PM EDT
How about if a company loses a patent case, all patents held by that company are
re-examined for validity? I'll even be nice and let them lose a couple first.
;)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Another idea...
Authored by: Mikkel on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 08:25 PM EDT
How about making the lawyer(s) from the firm bringing a lawsuit with these
worthless patents being responsible for paying the winner's legal fees and
expediences. Then the lawyer(s) can try and collect it from their clients. It
might make then think twice about representing patent trolls.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Another idea... - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 11:32 AM EDT
Rackspace/Red Hat Hand Uniloc A Quick And Significant Defeat ~mw
Authored by: jto on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 09:45 AM EDT
The patent was filed in 1995 and issued in 1999. Back then the
USPTO was issuing patents for just about anything submitted to
them. It is only in the last few years that some people inside
the USPTO and a lot of people outside are viewing patent
requests with a critical eye.

---
Regards, Jim Elliott

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Rounding a number IS an arithmetic computation
Authored by: SirHumphrey on Saturday, March 30 2013 @ 09:35 PM EDT
The Uniloc claim is also deficient because it SHOULD say:

"rounding the converted floating-point number" by an arithmetic computation;

"performing an a further arithmetic computation upon said rounded number"

The number cannot first be rounded without having an algortihm (i.e mathematical decision) to decide HOW to round that number - what precision, where is the decimal point, round up or down - by threshold or probability?

There is no magic involving floating-point numbers that cannot be performed by humans, considering that they are a human representation. Want to quickly decide if the multiplication of two floating point numbers will be positive? Perform an Exclusive OR on the sign bits. Two positive operands will have two 0 sign bits, resulting in a positive result for the multiplication and 0 for the XOR. Two negative operands will have two 1 sign bits, also resulting in a positive result for the multiplication and 0 for the XOR. Anything else is a negative result for the multiplication with a 1 for the XOR.

This applies to any number of multiplications and can therefore be quickly checked with a multiple input XOR, commonly known as a parity check, such that an odd number of "1" sign bits will result in a final "1" sign bit, and thus a negative result (assuming all input numbers are valid).

This will save considerable computation, but it's not patentable. A young child could do the same by counting how many sign-bit 1s there are and checking if the result is odd or even.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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