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Patents

Macromedia Bites Back Patent Style Versus Adobe 109

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-lawyers dept.
Arkan writes "After Adobe sued Macromedia over their patented tabbled widgets, Macromedia has made counterclaims against Adobe for using their patents on graphic element blending (5,467,443), and sound waveform editing (5,151,998 and 5,204,969)."
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Macromedia Bites Back Patent Style Versus Abode More

Macromedia Bites Back Patent Style Versus Abode

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  • Re:And (Score:3)

    by crisco ( 4669 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @05:20AM (#748225) Homepage
    shouldn't that be:

    And Abodadobe to you all?

  • ...and patent the idea of farting while pissing.
    It's just as idiot as patenting the idea of editing numbers on my computer that happen to produce a recognizable sound when fed to a DAC.
  • ... they lick each other's asses ...

    Actually, we sniff each other's arses. We only lick our own arses. And remember, on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.

    Chris
  • Have you look at the waveform patents. Almost every sound editing program I have seen uses this kind of interface. What's the deal? Soon they will sue all people who use this kind of program and then all you have left is their program. Why was this pattent granted?

    Laine Walker-Avina

  • About 200 years ago.

  • Here's my beef with the legal profession: there is no balance.

    In most spheres of life, resources devoted are weighed against benefits gained. For example, money goes to NASA or education or defense based on price-return deliberations in Congress. Or, using your first example, money goes to bakers only to the extent that people hunger for their goods. More recently, HMOs and insurers have enforced cost-benefit calculations on the medical field.

    But the logic of cost-benefit has yet to arrive in the legal sphere. There is no checking force on the flood of money going into lawyers' pockets, as there is for bakers (since people desire only so much food) or defense contractors (where we weigh military need against cost) or doctors (where insurers have strict limits on what they will pay for). With this absence of cost-benefit thinking, barriers to litigation are now at toe-stub height, procedures once a case begins are grossly protracted, and consequently the legal profession has become a black hole for society's resources.

    So, sure, we need legal recourse to have a stable society. But many of us feel that we've gone far, far beyond that level of litigation.

  • And what job did many of the elected representatives in the US do before they went into politics? Guess.

    Clowns?

    Seriously though, this is the same problem the world over, including here in Europe where we are bound to have similar IP laws as the US soon enough. All because lawyers create their own work.

    It's sort of like a dentist going round punching people in the face with the right hand while slipping a business card into their pocket with the left.


    Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
  • This is completely OT, but I would just like to comment on Slashdot's increasing number of spelling and grammatical errors as of late. I have been trying to ignore it, but "Abode?" Who is that? It's one of the worst mistakes yet, and it's right there in a headline. Every day the page is riddled with errors. Is there an editor? Does anyone proofread anything? Does anyone else notice this besides me? Hemos? Cmdr Taco? Any comment?
  • damn skippy. Moderate this up.

  • PNG is not a proprietary format. It's a wonderfully open format that has many great features. Alpha transparency, lossless compression, supports 24 bit color, has good interlacing abilities to load faster and makes files that are smaller than a comparable GIF.

  • Re:Standard Business Practice (Score:3)

    by MrScience ( 126570 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @07:30AM (#748235) Homepage
    I agree that what Amazon patented was fine, as a DEFENSIVE patent. Amazon, however, used it OFFENSIVELY, suing Barns & Noble with no previous provocation.

    That's why I'm boycotting Amazon. They weren't using it defensively.
  • "So, then, if someone invents a fantastic tool to break into houses, then conventional property will be "rendered obsolete", then, will it?"

    Your sentence reads better thus:

    So, then, if someone invents a fantastic tool to break into houses [and copy the contents], then conventional property [law] will be "rendered obsolete", then, will it?

    To which the answer would be `yes`, but thats not what we`re talking about.
  • I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious'"""" stupid comments on /.

    Inifinity.....

    so there
    ---
    Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
  • These are software patents. They do not constitute all of what IP law is. This Slashdot page for example is copyrighted, not patented.
  • Copyright is dead, and I think it's time we started to accept that and move on to new models, instead of trying to do rediculous things with the old one. Cut our losses and get out and find a better way of doing things.
    It was a nice attempt at karma whoring, but the article is about PATENTS, not copyrights.

    Repeat after me... Patent != Trademark != Copyright != Trade Secret...

  • "If you were working for Adobe or Macromedia, would you do anything differently?"

    I'd probably quit my job.

    Okay,okay, I'm just saying that ;-)

    - Steeltoe
  • It's quite simple to come to a conclusion about wether software patent laws are sane or not:

    Imagine a world where Microsoft/IBM/AOL/Whoever came up with the very first OS, applications and network-solution. They patented that. Where would we be now?

    I mean: COME ON! What if a company comes up with a totally new concept. Should they have monopoly on that? You can blablabla all you like, that they should be rewarded, but excactly how much are we supposed to give away? Noone has a "Right" to enslave humanity just because they came up with something great.

    - Steeltoe
  • Here's the way things go in the Corporate World. Coroporations, ideally, use each other to increase both's revenues. Example: IBM buys advertising from Leo Burnett. Leo Burnett buy rigs from IBM. Corporations also go after end-user dollars to increase revenues. That VA Linux server puts money in VA's pocket. A small store buying a POS system puts cash in the pockets of the corp they bought it from. Anti-ideally, corps can cannibalize each other. That's what's happening here.
  • Maybe I'm getting confused by the overuse of the word "said" and "derived" in their patent. Can somebody explain what the element blending patent actually refers to? I've read it, and to me it seems as though it may be something like Adobe's ability to link layers, and then by scaling one, you scale another. Is this a correct analogy?
  • The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.

    IMHO it should not be privatized (semi or otherwise) because privatization has one goal - profit. The problem (as i see it) now with the patent office is that the examiners have a financial imperative to approve as many patents as they can. Remove that imperative, you remove the desire to approve every patent flying across their desk, which appears to be part of the problem now.

  • Comparing the artificial, state-sanctioned IP "rights" to a woman's $DEITY-given right not to have her body violated is not only bogus, it's also an insult to women.
  • Is it possible these lawsuit all stem from having too many lawyers on retainer and trying to justify the cost of a legal department?

    Somewhere there is a happy middleground, or maybe not so much as happy but mutually dissatisfying. I like the idea of patents and IP in general, but I think, like so many others, that this has gotten too far out of hand. Perhaps a new level of bureaucracy within the Patent Office that needs to be contacted in cases of suspected patent violations. This would add months to the process of making a claim against someone, add tons of paperwork, and would then become enough of an obstacle that only something that a person considers a major infringement would be pursued.

    A zero-tolerance society is not a good society at all. God forbid we have a zero-tolerance speed limit of a zero-tolerance litter law.

    Of course this always boils down to the same issue: the US patent office accepts too many stupid patents. The question is how do we, average citizens, affect some change in that government agency?

  • Re:Stupid mods (Score:3)

    by Nicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) <nicoaltiva@gmai l . c om> on Thursday September 28, 2000 @05:26AM (#748247) Journal
    I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious" stupid comments on /.

  • Standard Business Practice (Score:5)

    by Sodium Attack ( 194559 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @05:27AM (#748248)
    This shows very well why companies feel the need to get dubious patents.

    "Our competitor has dubious patent A. We know it won't stand up in court and we'd like to do A. Now we can either 1) go ahead and do A, and fight the inevitable lawsuit--even though we'll win, this will cost us half a million dollars, minimum; or 2) we can get dubious patent B--then when they sue us for A, we sue them for B, and we settle out-of-court with a cross-licensing agreement."

    This is why I don't blame Amazon for the one-click patent and won't boycott them (well, at least not for that)--that's just a symptom, and treating the symptom does not cure the disease. The root cause is that these patents are being granted in the first place.

    Patent examiners are overworked (given an entirely unreasonable quota of patents they have to examine in a given time) and underpaid (making significantly less than their counterparts in industry). Of course, it doesn't help that the House of Representatives has voted to take away $295M in patent fees from the USPTO in FY2001. [ipo.org] The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.

  • Your examples aren't very comparabile to the suit-counter suit situation.

    With for example bread, the baker wins because he gets paid for the bread. I win, because I get bread.

    With the suit-counter suit situation, probably at the end of the day there will be a cross licensing agreement made, where macromedia are allowed to continue doing what they are doing, and so are adobe. They could have avoided the whole mess by not doing anything. In this case the lawers win, because they get paid, but the companies loose, because they pay but get nothing in return.

  • I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious'"" stupid comments on /.
  • Don't worry it'll get worse. Just wait for the slew of 'we should all just use Gimp anyhow' posts.
  • I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious'""" stupid comments on /.
  • .... but the cap fits, exceedingly well.

    You are telling me that there is literally no limit on the ability of private companies to spend money on defending their property, while contrasting this with the fantastic, rational, incorruptible process whereby the US Congress decides to spend money on placing unnecessary air force bases in marginal districts of MidWestern states.

    Think about this for a while: Your example of a rational cost-benefit analysis is the US Congress' decisions on spending taxpayers' money

  • More exactly:

    Your sentence reads better thus: So, then, if someone invents a fantastic tool to break into houses [and copy the contents {thus destroying their value to the owners}], then conventional property [law] will be "rendered obsolete", then, will it?

    And the answer is still "no".

  • And you think there's a single lawyer out there that couldn't come up with "existing drawings" or whatever the term is?

    "Cut the crap Hamlet, my biological clock is ticking and I want babies NOW!" - RSC, London 2000

  • Oh yeah?

    Infinity times infinity.

    ha ha
    ---
    Interested in the Colorado Lottery?

  • Thank you! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thank you for writing a rational answer to something that I would probably have flaimed back.

    I just wanted to comment your point that making punitive damages go to the governament would change the legal playing field.

    Trust me - that is a good idea.

    Welcome to Finland: all the damages go to governament. So if you want money you have to claim "mental injury" or "loss of sales" or something. For example the lady with the McDonald coffee cup would have gotten: $1 for a cup of coffee, $unlimited for actual hospital bill, $1000 maybe, for suffering, $unlimited for her legal fees. OTOH McDonald still might have gotten big fines for selling dangerous coffee.

    And I for one think this is a good thing as it makes people consider the damages they have suffered before they go to court.

    However. There is another problem in our system that I think the US is doing better with: Almost always the looser pays all legal fees. So in the same old lady/McDonald example if the lady wins she gets a good compensation for her damages, but if she loses she is in financial ruin because Mc Donald's can easily waste a couple a M$ at their lawers.

    The reason I feel this is better in the US is that you seem to have more organisations like UCLA or EFF that help people fight corporations.

    Oh well...

    --
    AC

  • But it's not just the US patent system, it's the concept of code itself. The legal system hasn't seen anything like it before, but it's trying to slam it into the current system, since they don't really understand it.. For example:

    • Code is text. Therefore, copyrightable.
    • Code is an engineering practice. Therefore, patentable.
    • Code can be kept under wraps. Therefore, trade secret laws apply.

    Unfortunately, for each one of the available IP methods currently in use, the ones they were actually originally meant to _apply_ to have balances. Plain, public English text is not an engineering practice (even if it describes one). Machines can be patented, but they aren't copyrightable nor under trade secret. And recipes or methods of production can be trade secret, which is another way of saying 'in-house machines to build the product.' But since when are trade secrets put right smack into public products, just hidden within them? Since software.

    The legal system's never seen anything like code or software before, and they're trying to 'fix it.' For better or for worse.

    I feel inevitably someone's going to state 'Enough!' and get rid of all the silly IP problems right now, but it's going to be a trek consisting mostly of being lugged through the mud.

    Getting politically active is about the best thing to do. Those who ignore politics or don't want to deal with them usually end up getting steamrolled by them, even on small scales. The common "Writing your representative" myth is almost entirely bogus, though, regardless of what people say. You need a lot of money or a _lot_ of social pull for that unless you have an actually respectable politician, which is an oxymoron. And I don't think anyone in the entire tech community could pull the latter. Everyone's too individual.

    And, I'm too tired right now to be coherent. I'll be quiet now.

  • I'm not sure how it applies to waveform editing, but it's clear that the technique of converting two Adobe vehicles into one minivan using a putty knife and water comes dangerously close to Macromedia's "graphic element blending" patent.

    Oh, Christ, that was lame. I'm sorry. Some days I don't know why I bother.

  • The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.

    No, this is just the problem. A few years ago Congress changed the way the patent office is funded. Instead of being granted a certain amount based on how many applications are reviewed, the system was supposed to become self-funding. But since more money is taken in from accepted patents, patent examiners were trained to view applicants as "customers" and operated under the idea that their job was to help their customers get patents.

    It doesn't even need to be restated that this has been a disaster, and it is a major cause of the patent system being in crisis. The funding of the patent office should be entirely unconnected with how many patents are actually granted.

  • It's worth noting that PNG, the format used natively by Macromedia Fireworks [macromedia.com], and PNG, the Portable Network Graphics [w3.org] format, aren't exactly the same. Macromedia embeds all kinds of wacky vector, layer, and texture information inside the PNG file (PNG is a raster format), which in other respects conforms to the standard.

    You can export plain vanilla PNG files from Fireworks, though. It's really a pretty nifty program.

  • The problem (as i see it) now with the patent office is that the examiners have a financial imperative to approve as many patents as they can. Remove that imperative, you remove the desire to approve every patent flying across their desk, which appears to be part of the problem now.

    But you still have the problem that they don't have adequate time and resources to examine the applications. Would arbitrarily accepting some applications and rejecting others be any better than the current system?

  • Have I done any design work?

    I remember Illustrator 88, and used to tile pages with hot wax to send to the printer (digital file? what's that?).

    Although Adobe's UI has always been better than FH, FH has always had a few more powerful features than AI. Until recently you couldn't even use a TIFF in AI.

    Despite having used AI professionally for about 15 years, I still can't figure out why the selection tool and the direct selection tool are two separate tools. FH manages to do exactly the same job with just one, single, selection tool. And they introduced drag-and-drop color editing, as well as the live blending their current patent case is talking about. And they've always had a better autotrace tool (though since Adobe stopped trying to push Streamline so much they seem to have improved AI's).

    So yes, I've done some design work with just about every version of FH and AI since they have been commercially available. Whle the Adobe UI is better, FH has won on features for about a decade now (as well as most magazine review shootouts)...

    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious'"""" stupid comments on /.

    Am I the only person thinking a nice LISP expression would be a bit more efficient here?

    --
  • I mean they actually seem to listen to public opinion. Unlike, say, Verizon.

  • Looks like the only people who are going to profit from this are the lawyers.

  • The Cold War - IP style (Score:4)

    by 64.28.67.48 ( 217783 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @04:51AM (#748268)
    This is like the cold war - it operates under the principle of mutually assured destruction. It's a bit sad that this is the best outcome under the state of software patents. Everyone sits on their missiles, but no one dares fire them because they are vulnerable to the enemy's missiles.

    -------------
  • That's ok, because Abode is just a cover company for the real Adobe with no assets, so if they loose the lawsuit macromidia can have that company...kinda like a decoy.

    guys please do some double checking, at least on the headline...

  • No Software Patents in Europe PLEASE (Score:4)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @04:54AM (#748270)

    This is a joke...period. The lax attitude of the U.S. Patent system is simply making a fortune for the lawyers! The shear concept of a software patent is absurd to me, perhaps if someone comes up with an entire new OS concept and wants to patent it...OK, but to patent an idea (such as one-click shopping) which is simply an application of common techniques (draw pixels to screen, use a cookie to save people typing) it is a farce.

    We all know this is going to end up with either a settlement (lawyers win) or a long trial with one company taking the spoils (lawyers and one company wins, everyone else including the consumer loses due to less choice). Please keep my legal system free of this...please, please, please.....I think I better get marching and making T-Shirts

  • Can someone explain to me what "aoutomatic reblending" is? If it is anything close to what it sounds like (i.e. when you change one of the underlying components of a blended image, the image gets updated to reflect that) then this whole case just gotten a whole deal more idiotic...
  • I'm more than a little perturbed by the original patents (about widgets) than the new ones. I think the new ones hold a lot more water.

    Widgets are pretty fundamental cornerstones of the GUI environment. Can you really judge some to be intellectual property.

    Also, what's going to happen when and if the whole thing gets ported to X? All the widgets are dynamic and can be changed. Is Adobe going to create a widget scheme that cannot be changed? And in doing so, you would be breaking their license agreement?

  • Abode? (Score:1)

    by RPoet ( 20693 )
    I had to like thrice... what's "Abode"? ;) Oh, wait a second...

    abode (-bd)
    v.
    A past tense and a past participle of abide.
    n.
    A dwelling place; a home
    The act of abiding; a sojourn.
    --
  • I really think Macromedia and Adobe should both stop their petty fighting. Their products work great together, I use Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Premier, etc,etc.. For awhile it actually looked like they were working together (PSD Support in Fireworks, enhanced PNG Support in Photoshop) And I think theres a flash/shockwave import addon for premier. I'd actually like to see one buy out the other.
  • Unfortunately, no one actually believes that the enemy's IP missiles can really destroy them, so they aren't afraid to fire. Everyone gets screwed and the lawyers get rich, same old same old.
  • You know, when I see things like this, I realize that we've taken this concept of IP simply too far...

    Copyright is dead, and I think it's time we started to accept that and move on to new models, instead of trying to do rediculous things with the old one. Cut our losses and get out and find a better way of doing things.

    Joshua
  • Is it possible these lawsuit all stem from having too many lawyers on retainer and trying to justify the cost of a legal department?

    No, it comes from a Prisoner's Dilemma [magnolia.net]. It would be better if no one had dubious patents than if everyone had dubious patents. But it's much much worse for me than either of those alternatives if my competitors have dubious patents and I don't.

  • I love it when the competitors of the company I work for fight aginst each other!(beats a partership) Mohaahah! "I love it when a plan comes together"
  • Sorry for this being a bit offtopic but i hope people interested in software patents would take the time to sign this petition.

    http://petition.eurolinux.org/ [eurolinux.org]

    It's really only relevant to europeans since it's a petition to the European Union authorities who are currently reviewing the validity of software patents. Whilst they haven't been made legal here I believe something like 55% of the board support implementing them.

    Personally I feel software patents stifle innovation and whilst actual algorithms should be considered seperately I feel patenting something as simple as those in this story is just wrong.

    For the record i've also submitted this as a /. story but it hasn't quite made the front page yet.
  • Why would Macromedia sue Adobe over it's car made out of clay, anyway?

  • Re:Actual Comment (Score:4)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Thursday September 28, 2000 @05:36AM (#748281) Homepage
    I'd actually like to see one buy out the other

    Huh? How would having one single graphics company with 90% market share improve the products? When Adobe bought Aldus years ago we all thought the competition was going to be gone, luckily Macromedia managed to form itself out of the remains of the last small-time competitors in the graphics arena.

    And the small print on the Aldus Freehand contract meant that Adobe didn't get to kill it like they'd planned to (and thus make Illustrator the only game in town), instead it reverted back to he developers and they went on to make the company we know and love today...

    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • The value of their property is two-fold though - one way being the intrinsic value of the technology, in the improvement of the human way-of-life. The other is the value from the rights to restrict peoples usage of a technology based on current intellectual property laws. If someone copies my setup (NOT my personal files, but the way my machine is configured) - have I lost anything? No, my machine still works just as well. But as soon as you start trying to formulate an industry around protecting the particular setup, even getting the government to restrict other people's ability to independantly develop the same setup, problems develop quickly. Same with other forms of IP. The thing is that in today's age, it is *impossible* to protect most forms of intellectual property yourself, so the government plays a big role. And companies exploit this to claim so much of their daily process as intellectual property that the common good suffers.
  • > macromidia

    Pot. Kettle. Black.
  • Sounds like a bad wrestling match or a good monster movie.

  • Well, IDHAVR (I dont have a video recorder) but if it was MY video recorder that was taken, in which way would your copying of it destroy its value to me? I`m assuming the copying didnt damage it in any way.
  • to everyone complaining how bad the uspto office is, and how no one there seems to get "it," I refer you to their employment announcemnt page [uspto.gov].

    Stack the deck with a bunch of anti-patent software engineers, and plug all the holes from the inside.

    You know you want to use the "Denied" stamp on anything requesting a software patent.


    - daniel

  • This is just another example of how terrible our current patent system is. It's similar to problems with the court system as well as our legislative process--it's all part of the technology divide. What it comes down to is that judges, patent clerks and legislators just don't get it and probably never will. Not that I blame them, in many cases, they've dedicated their lives to learning their job and the ins and outs of computers and other complicated technologies weren't a part of their education. So we get judges making rulings that don't make sense to those "in the know"; we get absolutely ludicrous patents being awarded, etc.

    I see this as the heart of the problem. Does any one have any suggestions on a better way to do things? As far as I'm concerned, a good starting point would be to credo from medicine:
    First, do no harm.
    Stop making rulings, laws and patents that screw things up worse than if nothing were done at all.

  • NOT my personal files, but the way my machine is configured

    Why not your personal files? That's your information, and it's valuable to you. "The Real Slim Shady" is Eminem's information, and it's valuable to him (and to the company which he sold it to).

    See, I get this feeling that Slashdot is very keen on their own intellectual property, but against everyone else's. And that's a fairly difficult position to defend.

  • Unfortunately it's very likely that European Patent Convention will be changed THIS Noverber in EPO conference in Munich, unless projects like Euro-linux petition succeed (not too big chance). Anyway anyone from Europe should act in this matter NOW, in 2 months it will be too late! If we can get 1/4 of the members (5 countries) of EPO to oppose the change, they'll never come into force..

    Ville Oksanen

    My DeCSS archive:
  • I thought it was the process conceived when one places a Gremlin in a blender and leaves a heavy weight on the on switch

    Well, then I fail to see why the technology should be confined to gremlins... Can we perhaps reinvent the process for frogs and patent that?.. Sort of an "embrace and extend" strategy. I'm sure that the prior art at joecartoon [joecartoon.com] will be neglected by the U.S. PTO.

    Failing that, we could simply try to register a "method for unsupervized plending of small pets" as a broader patent. Anyone who's ever used a blender to get back at their kitten for peeing on the rug will have to pay up!

  • here's a supreme court justice of the time on copyright and patent crap:

    "It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufacturers. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith."

    - 1882 by Justice Bradley
  • This story brings out the #1 reason that companies hoard patents. Not so that they can sue other companies. Rather, to protect themselves when other companies get greedy.

    For ideas not necessarily worthy of the (semi-)costly patent process, IBM "publishes" (sends copies to a number of major libraries) thousands of articles a year so that if someone else tries to patent an idea and then tries to sue IBM, IBM can go back to an old article and show prior art.

    You don't seriously think M$ has put millions into research just so that they could add mr. paper clip to MS Word, did you? Or, to promote general computer science research? Nope. If companies come after them on patent violations, they want some extra oomph (as though they need any) for killing lawsuits before they even get started.

    It's all a big game, but not one that is going to be fixed easily (as though it's even possible to fix the patent industry...)

    Jason

  • We all have bad habits that are hard to break. Perhaps you could try calling people "dolt" as a transitional word.

    At one level, you're right: at some point, individuals and companies have no more money left to give to lawyers. But this is the problem-- that is the only limit.

    Weighing costs and benefits is never easy or exact or free of dubious side-considerations. That's life. "Fantastic, rational, incorruptible" are your words, not mine. Your alternative to doing the best we can would be...? (See, I've kicked my bad habit.)

    Meaningful legal reform based on cost-benefit analysis might entail, for example, scaling back discovery, penalizing harassment suits, barring lawsuits outright in more situations, or redirecting punitive damages to public coffers. (And if so many companies prefer to arbitrate rather than litigate, then perhaps litigation could take some cues from arbitration?) Each is hotly debatable, of course, but the trial lawyers lobby works effectively to stifle the very idea of weighing costs of legal procedures against the benefits in justice and social order. They prefer your model-- people should simply pay lawyers until they're bled white. Now, I wonder why that would be?

  • And I am going to patent the process of patenting something so all future patents will have to pay me royalties.
  • Actually, Manzi of Lotus made the crack about wanting to perform cashectomy [abanet.org] on Borland. (IMHO, Borland should have stuck with compilers--they might not be the empty, burned out husk of their former selves they are today if they had.)
  • But you still have the problem that they don't have adequate time and resources to examine the applications. Would arbitrarily accepting some applications and rejecting others be any better than the current system?


    No. What would be better is automatic rejection of the patent if the examiner doesn't have time to examine it properly. So the default should be rejection, not acceptance. A patent grants a monopoly. It should be difficult to get.

    --
  • A friend of mine heard about this today and wrote the following:

    The waveform-editing patent was filed in 1988. Adrian Freed (now at CNMAT) wrote MacMix, which is doing a lot of what they claim, in 1984 or 1985 at IRCAM.

    The original MacMix was running the audio storage, processing, and real-time playback on a huge VAX computer connected via a serial port to Mac Plus, who was running the GUI. Later Adrian sold MacMix to ???? (I forgot the name) who was aquired by Studer and became Studer Editech. The whole system was called Dyaxis.

    Doug

  • On the other hand, giving punitive damages to the government then gives the government itself an incentive to start throwing around frivolous tort cases.

    Not saying it's a bad idea, but one really does need to look out for the law of unintended consequences.

    --

  • I will show you 5,342,548 if you show me 4,663,123. I will let you use 5,411,234 if you let me use 5,603,321. Don't touch 5,902,234 or I will sue. nanana.

    Oh by the way no one can use 6,XXX,XXX because I have a 5,999,999. :)

    atto
  • I would have to agree there aren't many companies who acutally listen to the general public. A company who decides to do so goes pretty far, whereas the majority of companies who don't listen to public scrutiny at all have tended to collapse in on themselves. Nice show.

  • Someone should patent unnecessary lawsuits. That way, every time one of these companies comes up with a frivolous lawsuit like this, they could be countersued by a third party. The punitive damages could make a great source of income.

    Of course, the other alternative would be to get rid of patents like this in the first place, but that would require change, and change is bad, right?

  • That's funny, just like my father and myself, Hemos is dyslexic: he spelled adobe just like my father says it...
  • The lax attitude of the U.S. Patent system is simply making a fortune for the lawyers!

    And what job did many of the elected representatives in the US do before they went into politics? Guess.

  • Need more proof that IP law is obsolete? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's time to find new ways to make money.

    IP is just the next industry being rendered obsolete by technology and is no different than factory workers being replaced by automation, ice delivery services being replaced by refrigerators, and pinsetters being replaced by machines at bownling allies.

    The P in IP is going away. Get over it. It's not "wrong". It's just progress. Lead, follow, or get out of the way, mmmkay?

  • This is a recurring trend I'm noticing.

    Look! Competitor A is working on something similar to one of our products. Ok, let's dive into our toy chest of software patents.

    Hmmm ... this looks good! "A method by which oxygen and other air-bourne particles travels across internal human organ organs at which point essential molecules are distributed to cellular material for consumption."

    Call up the CEO of Competitor A and claim they violated our patents for breathing. They actively and knowingly used our intellectual property for every single developer on that competing product.

    Inform them that we expect 50% royalties on every sold unit, or we'll sue them.

    This whole paranoid patenting of anything and everything to use against competitors just in case they try something on us is getting out of hand. When did patents become a tool for corporate battle in both offence and defence, instead of the legit benefit of those that put effort into creating something meaningful.

  • F'kng great isn't it? This probably counts as "insightful" round here. Yes, you moron, the only people who profit directly from doing law are lawyers. How many people, however, profit from the existence of a coherent and practical commercial code? Or to put it another way, what do the following countries have in common: Laos, the USSR, France and Equatorial Guinea? Two things: they don't have as many lawsuits as the USA, and they're not as rich as the USA. A strong economy requires as little as possible prior resraint of activity. Which means, inevitably that there will be more ex post regulation of activity, or in other words lawsuits.

    Of course, Slashdot "gets it" when they say that the best way to produce software is through a thousand and one tiny revisions, rather than a huge monolithic system. But when the best IP law system in the world is developed in the same way (through a thousand and one lawsuits), the knees start jerking.

    Let's apply some of your stupid populist logic to other industries, shall we?

    • Bread

      Looks like the only people who are going to profit from this are the bakers

    • Cure for cancer

      Looks like the only people who are going to profit from this are the doctors

    • Sexual intercourse

      Looks like the only people who are going to profit from this are the hookers

    • VA Linux has an IPO

      Looks like the only people who are going to profit from this are ..... well, nobody.

    God, sometimes I wonder why I bother.
  • Actually there was an article in a Swedish newspaper today (SVD) that mentioned that EU is establishing new patent rules so that it will become easier to obtain patents, and that those patents will automatically apply in the entire EU (plus some other associated states).

    You see, the politicians have seen statistics that the US grants more patents per year that EU, so that the EU must DO SOMETHING to rectify this! Otherwise Europe will lag behind in innovation! :-O

    I did not see any specific information about "software patents", but I'm very afraid we will see much more of this in Europe...

  • I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious'"""" stupid comments on /.

    Then I'm going to patent the process of submitting a patent application to the patent office just because I can
  • Oh, well, you think this software existed on the Amiga before 1988.

    <sarcasm>Well, you just go right down to the patent office and tell them that and I'm sure they'll take your word for it.</sarcasm>

  • I thought it was the process conceived when one places a Gremlin in a blender and leaves a heavy weight on the on switch
  • Actually the best they hope for is that all patents are upheld going both ways. If this happens, then they can just exchange, and they have the results of previous court cases to cite in suits brought against others.

    This brings up the interesting possibility that they have agreed beforehand to bring these suits, and to intentionally lose just to patents they do own.

  • Are these tactics becoming standard practice in business ethics? This is funny and pathetic at the same time: "They sued us for WHAT?!?! Well, then, you file lawsuits against them over infringing patents X, Y, and Z!!!"

    Yes, exactly. Then they come to an out-of-court settlement where they cross-license the patents to each other, which is much cheaper than pursuing the lawsuit.

    If you were working for Adobe or Macromedia, would you do anything differently?

  • Lotus sued Borland about stealing the "look and feel" of 123.

    Borland CEO complained about Lotus performing a "Cashectomy" on them.

    Where did it get them? Lotus and Borland lost the market to Microsoft. Moral is suing on Look and feel doesn't get you anywhere. Stick to proprietary file formats like Microsoft and you are fine (ASF ...etc).
  • 1) Adobe's patent is on floating tabbed widgets

    2) Macromedia patent 1 allows you to interactively edit defining elements of a graphic, and have the graphics automatically update (1991 filing date)

    3) Macromedia patent 2 is on displaying multiple sound waveforms and allowing you to interactively edit and mix them (no, it really is almost this broad). (1988 filing date)

    4) Macromedia patent 3 allows one to display a single waveform and change parameters of the waveform. (1992 filing date)

    That is all OK, we will be free and clear of these patents in the year 2010 or so. It seems like Europe is going to have a substantial advantage in software generation, since the European countries don't allow stupid tripe like these patents.

  • Who the hell is Abode? Is that like Adobe? ;)
  • Actually the best they hope for is that all patents are upheld going both ways. If this happens, then they can just exchange, and they have the results of previous court cases to cite in suits brought against others.

    Nope, they wouldn't do that, because they risk a terrible loss if one company's patents are upheld and the other's are not.

    I'd bet dollars to donuts that they'll settle out of court with a cross-licensing agreement. (Contrary to the ignorance of many /.ers, licensing agreements do not strengthen a patent's validity.)

  • This whole software patent thing stinks so much that it is not difficult to envision a future where even typing on a keyboard (manipulating via finger pressure a table with buttons that have symbols on top in order to enter information into an information processing device) or looking at the messages scrolling on the screen (visually gathering information of what is happening in the system via scrolling sequences of symbols on a display device) will be patented.
    In that future, the whole patent business will be so huge that no one will be able to sue anyone without being sued back, by hundreds of small companies that derive their money solely by idea patenting and suing (sp?). The moment some company is bold enough to sue another, everybody else jumps on the bandwagon and sues the same company for their patents.
    Can anyone say this will be a bright future? Guess not.
  • However, like in the case of DeCSS, if you OWN the house but there are no keys to the (weakly locked) door, but the fucked lock company made the same key for all their locks, and you build a key for YOUR house, it would be illegal. It's the damned lock company's fault for making the duped keys (DVD-CCA), so making a fantastic tool for breaking in your own house that you werent given a key to the house you own (using CSS-Auth). Basically, IP isnt right if you payed to have the property.
  • How come that all these pro-big business integrists always have an irrational problem with France? Leave us alone, please. Stop insulting us. Stop offending us. Keep your system, if you like it. But forget us, for god's sake.
  • Macromedia is SOOOOO much better than Adobe it's not even funny. Flash, for instance, is almost 180% better than Livemotion*.

    In fact, I think Adobe should go rot in hell with Microsoft for running a monopoly. I hate their tactic of giving away thousands of copies of Photoshop to schools so it becomes the "Industry Standard", and then charging $700 for a fricking drawing program. Screw that, I'm not your bitch anymore, Adobe.

    (*this statistic randomly generated for your pleasure.)

  • Look at it this way.

    If I go to the store to buy bread, I'll stop when I have enough bread, when the price gets too high or somthing. People may pay too much for bread, just as the government can make some really dumb decisions about what to purchase with their resouces, but they still have the capacity a cost benefit model based on the benifit gained by both parties.

    This above model cannot be applied to the american legal system for several reasons.

    1. Unlike other professions, where there is an impetus to make information available to people without a professional background, law has generally not followed that trend. It often seems to go out of it's way to remain 'profesionalized' which means, in part, inaccessible to the lay person. Exclusivity is helpful to practitioners of law because in helps keep the value of their labor high.

    2. Perhaps even more significantly, the cost benefit analysis of the use of legal services done by a person considering bringing a suit only considers the person's own benefit, unlike a normal free maket which takes into account the cost vs. benefit of all parties. . A very rough analogy would be a person going into a hunting store with the intention of killing off his business competitors. In this cost benefit analysis, he would weigh the cost of bullets vs. the benefit gained from the elimination/woudning of his competition and maybe from crossfire. The Businessman would not have to consider the price his competition put on his own welfare, as it often wouldn't in the american legal system.

    You know that there are such things as harrassment lawsuits. You know that 'protecting "rightful" property' is not the only use that businesses have for the american legal system. In biotechnology, these 'property rights' were extended to the patenting of living, preexisiting genes which were discovered by non-unique methods. An excellent example of the mallebility and injustice of existing patent laws which counters the idea that the american legal system is the equivalent of justice. No law was passed to allow living genes to become patentable and it isn't covered under existing patent law. These 'rights' cannot honestly be called democratic or an interpertation of existing law.

    3. The third point ties the other two together. A company with more assets often has a benefit in bringing a suit against a smaller company since the smaller company may not be able to afford the legal fees if it loses or needs to appeal. As long as there is competition between businesses, businesses will use the legal system to harass their competition. UCITA is just one example, which will force smaller companies to expend large amounts of money to correct this 'bug' in the american legal code. The current system often only forces businesses to consider their own costs v. benefits without considering their 'victims' costs- an unplesant and often wasteful situation in a free market. This is particularly relevant in the technology sector when a company can appeal a suit long enough to outlive their competition and make the suit irrelevant. In short, the company with more assets can and often does use those assets through the american legal system to stifle it's competiton.

    So to tie things together;

    1.Lawyers are interested in keeping law complex so that they can continue to be well paid for their services. Thus, legal defense is more available to the wealthy. While this distribution of resources is justifiable for goods, it is not justifiable for justice.

    2. Those attempting and succeeding in abusing the American legal system have only their own benefit in mind. Law should not automaticaly be considered synonymous with justice.

    3. Because business to business lawsuits ( I'm talking non-injury based lawsuits) often favors those with more wealth, representation in American law is less than democratic.

    In short, there isn't an ethical basis for having the american legal system exist as a purchasable resource in a free market. People who earn more money may deserve more bread or better cars, but there is no ethical basis for giving them better legal representation. I'm not a socialist by any means, but if there's one part of America that needs to be socialized it's the legal system.



  • What would be better is automatic rejection of the patent if the examiner doesn't have time to examine it properly. So the default should be rejection, not acceptance. A patent grants a monopoly. It should be difficult to get.

    I agree with the last part of your statement above. However, it is grossly unfair to the applicant--especially after paying thousands of dollars in patent application fees and attorney fees--to reject it simply because the patent examiner doesn't have time to examine the patent.

    If you're going to have a patent system at all, it needs to be done properly. Arbitrarily rejecting potentially good patents is just as bad as arbitrarily granting bad ones.

  • No, this is just the problem. A few years ago Congress changed the way the patent office is funded. Instead of being granted a certain amount based on how many applications are reviewed, the system was supposed to become self-funding. But since more money is taken in from accepted patents, patent examiners were trained to view applicants as "customers" and operated under the idea that their job was to help their customers get patents.

    But these are two orthogonal issues. It would be easy to return to a system whereby patent fees were the same whether your application was granted or rejected, and still privatize the USPTO. You make the point yourself: having a system where people pay more for granted applications than for rejected ones causes problems regardless of whether the office is quasi-privatized or not. And the rhetoric that the USPTO is currently supposed to be self-funding is no more than political hot air, since Congress regularly takes money from patent fees away from USPTO.

  • This is reminiscent of when 3dfx sued NVidia over a multitexturing patent, and then NVidia sued 3dfx over five controller design patents. Are these tactics becoming standard practice in business ethics? This is funny and pathetic at the same time: "They sued us for WHAT?!?! Well, then, you file lawsuits against them over infringing patents X, Y, and Z!!!"

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