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I'm surprised not to see EV1 on that list. | 225 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections
Authored by: Kilz on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 01:13 AM EDT
Please list the mistake in the title of your post.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • RIIA -> SIIA - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 02:18 AM EDT
    • RIIA -> SIIA - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 10:50 AM EDT
    • RIIA -> SIIA - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 12:33 PM EDT
  • Balko -> Balto - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 12:11 PM EDT
Off Topic
Authored by: Kilz on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 01:15 AM EDT
For all posts that are not On Topic. Please make all links
clickable with HTML.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Newspicks
Authored by: Kilz on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 01:17 AM EDT
Please mention the name of the news story in the title of the
top post. A link to the story is helpful as they eventually
leave the Home page. That way people can read the story
commented on.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes
Authored by: Kilz on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 01:18 AM EDT
Please post all transcriptions of Comes exhibits here for PJ.
Please post the html in "Plain Old Text" mode so she can
easily copy it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Curious....
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 01:35 AM EDT
Would an affirmative defence stating that the PAE (Troll) does not have rights
to the patents in question force out the ownership chain through discovery?

If so, that could sting a bit.

--Alma

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'm surprised not to see EV1 on that list.
Authored by: Davo.Sydney on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 02:05 AM EDT
I recall that EV1 paid SCO for a license that it should not have bought, and as
it turns out, was not needed (EV1 were $800,000 victims of SCO's FUD, the CEO
was actually 'Fearful' of a lawsuit). According to the Wikipedia article,
(Please correct me and the Wikipedia article if this is wrong):

"A Utah court document[7] filed on April 5, 2006, revealed that Robert
Marsh, co-founder and CEO of EV1, was misled by SCO's Philip Langer's claims
when making the deal, and that EV1 paid $800,000 for the licence.[8]"

The Wikipedia references:
([7] http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.org/pdf/IBM-835-Exhibit_224.pdf)
([8] http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/page/67/ (The article has moved from where
Wikipedia reference's it, but I found toward the bottom of the page in one of
"Jeremy's Blog", dated October 19,2006)

Even thou the license may not have been for Patents,(It was a license for
"Intellectual Property"), a comment from EV1, now known as "The
Planet Internet Services", would carry some weight to this issue would it
not?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SIIA Tells the FTC What Patent Trolls Are Doing to the Software Industry ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 02:52 AM EDT
It appears to me that a possible solution to the problem (other than abolishing
software patents altogether which, while maybe better, is harder to acheive)
would be that no court case is allowed to go forward until plaintiff has
identified specifically which patents are infringed and how.

No airy-fairy rubbish, the list is it, and no adding stuff later on. If you
don't know that someone is actually infringing, you should not be bringing a
lawsuit.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SIIA Tells the FTC What Patent Trolls Are Doing to the Software Industry ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 05:20 AM EDT
But the real problem doesn't occur to them, which is that software shouldn't be patentable in the first place. That truly is the core problem.

This is wrong. The current law may or may not be readable in a way that makes software unpatentable. But calling that the "core problem" ignores all the damage that is happening in other arenas. Software patents are not the core problem; software just makes the symptoms painfully obvious.

The core problem is twofold:

  • Patent offices, and the United States bears the main burden of shame here, are far too ready to give out patents for work that doesn't deserve it.
  • Defending a patent action is far too costly.

The fast pace of software development and the near- infinite complexity and variability attainable in software exacerbate these problems enormously, but they are problems in all fields. It is perfectly possible to obtain a vague, patent in, say, microelectronics, which would be obvious to someone whose business is microelectronics. It is perfectly possible to sue a company or all of its customers in the classic PAE pattern. It has nothing to do with software. The USPTO, US courts and unscrupulous patent-holders are doing terrific damage in all sorts of fields, from microbiology to pharmaceuticals to electronics to model train sets.

Patents are meant to encourage innovation. When we think that, we all picture the tinkerer in his garage who comes up with a great idea, patents it and gets rich. It's time to ditch that picture and recognise that patents, as they stand, generally do not reward invention. The guy tinkering in his garage probably can't afford to take one out.

It's also not really obvious that software and algorithms shouldn't be patentable. I think the MP3 patent is an instructive example; Fraunhoffer invested a lot of money in basic research into aurology and acoustics, discovered a lot of interesting things and packaged it into a truly innovative algorithm for compressing music. They made it free for playback, and then free for open-source encoders when it was pointed out this was a problem. This seems the sort of research and innovation that should be rewarded by the patent system and the sort of attitude we like to see from patent holders. It's not clear to me why saying, "Oh, but it's software," should mean that this sort of research and innovation shouldn't be rewarded.

[ Reply to This | # ]

There's the problem right there...
Authored by: Gringo_ on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 09:01 AM EDT

The innovative companies that make up SIIA’s membership rely upon patent protection to protect their inventions... SIIA members have benefited from owning thousands of patents.

You can't have it both ways. They want to hang on to their patents, while in the same breath they complain about others attacking them with patents.

When the members of this organization announce publicly that they are ready to renounce their own patents as part of a larger solution involving elimination of software patents they will gain more credibility in my eyes.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why they ignored the "core problem."
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 10:56 AM EDT
But the real problem doesn't occur to them, which is that software shouldn't be patentable in the first place.
There's a very good reason they ignored this. It's because they're responding to a request for comments on Patent Assertion Entities. Not a request for comment on all the ills of the software patent world.

Claiming it "didn't occur to them" is disingenuous. Whether software should be patentable at all isn't the question at issue. Like any good laywer, they fought the battle they were asked to fight.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SIIA Tells the FTC What Patent Trolls Are Doing to the Software Industry ~pj
Authored by: JamesK on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 11:50 AM EDT
Perhaps one solution to this would be to require patent holders to clearly
identify what patents are infringed and how at first contact with the
mark^H^H^H^H infringer. If you don't clearly identify, you lose the right to
sue.

---
The following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SIIA Tells the FTC What Patent Trolls Are Doing to the Software Industry ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 04:26 PM EDT
That's SIIA, not RIAA :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Interlaced h.264 Moto=Patent Troll
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 21 2013 @ 01:12 AM EDT
Which video card manufactures pay Moto a license for h.264 interlaced
video patents. AMD, NVidea, Intel? No not the hardware manufacturers but
only the software manufacturers? Now MS?

I thought this website was against software patents?

Or is it we hate software patents unless they are owned by the almighty
Google, our one and only God?

If we hate software patents what makes Google unique and uncopyable?
Their lawyers?

[ Reply to This | # ]

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