Oracle Fights EpicRealm Patents

An anonymous reader writes "Oracle is now fighting EpicRealm's web patents after Safelite settled with EpicRealm, then asked Oracle to pay, as per their software license agreement. EpicRealm's patents are vague and 'describe a technique where a web site updates only part of a website instead of having to rebuild the entire page. That may look a lot like DHTML, but apparently it isn't the same.'"

The real problem

[Umbral Blot]

I guess it's good that the big boys are fighting it out, maybe the patent trolls will lose this time. However this doesn't fix the real problem with the patent system. And no the real problem is not that you can get a patent for anything. The real problem is that it is too costly to defend against an illegitimate claim. If you could defend yourself cheaply against these stupid patents then it wouldn't matter if they were granted, you could just swat them away without blinking.

Re:The real problem

[Serveert]

Just wait until Intellectual Ventures(IV) starts suing. Keep in mind Google and others have 'paid off' this patent troll. We shall see what everyone's truly made of when IV goes on a suing rampage. Worst case, IV sues people for obvious patents they bought, google and others get off scott free, the rest of us must pay bribe money to IV. Best case, IV goes down in flames, but I don't see that as happening, the founder nrrhrnrh or whatver his name is will not go down without a fight. He thinks he's not a patent troll, but others who are against him "hate intellectual property." Reminds me of people who "hate america" because they don't agree with you.

No shit, Sherlock...

[Khyber]

EpicRealm's patents are vague and 'describe a technique where a web site updates only part of a website instead of having to rebuild the entire page. That may look a lot like DHTML, but apparently it isn't the same.

I was able to do this before DHTML or PHP. It was called a dynamic CGI database script, and it was used for "realtime" CGI/HTML-based chatrooms (I typed something, unless you hit refresh after I typed it you'd have to hit refresh again to get your information that I sent...) The only thing that refreshed was a frame unless some interaction (this was all for a web RPG,) caused a change in other frames of the page. This sounds exactly like what I'm doing, without frames, and hell, you can onyl tell I'm using frames because I alow you to resize the damned windows for your resolution, so you've gotta be able to somewhat see the bars. Had I made this a fixed resolution and frame size, well, more people would play with the page in the upper-left corner of their web browser, but it'd still refresh the particular needed areas without "reloading" the page (since only one/two frame(s) is(are) changing, kinda just like how PHP can make this happen...)

So I've had prior art to begin with, since.. 1997? (That is if I can pull up my old documentation from my old ISP/Provider and get a reliable backlog of files I made/uploaded to what I have backups of on my computer.) It's past 7 years so I guess I'm a couple years late, unless there's some potential extenuating circumstance I can talk about.. oh, wait! Almost any website TO-FUCKING-DAY can do things like that in PHP, Perl, RPG script, or even CGI script. Why are these idiots suing to begin with?!?!? Hello? Is anyone home in the CEO/Shareholder department? Do I need to smack you upside your head to get some rational and logical thought out of you? No - I take that back... we've probably already given potential proof that you and your entire IT department is semi-useless because we've already put your server traffic to a crawl only by looking at your whole site.

Sorry for the rant, guys, but lots of this just screams BULLSHIT to me. I've done this - these guys obviously haven't figured out a way of implementing it - I could make a /. attack-worthy server using a two-month late unpaid geoshitties account, for fuck's sake, just by using the technique they describe - yet they don't seem to bother to employ it very well in their website, from what I can get cached from other mirror sites. :( They're full of crap, as far as I'm concerned.

Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If some company owns "Intellectual Property" worth billions, WHERE ARE THE TAXES?

If the co. owns an old chevy pickup or a building, they have to pay property tax on it.

TAX THE IP OWNERS based on what THEY CLAIM IT IS WORTH.

The rest of us will get a free ride next April 15.

Re:The true problem with patents

[Anonymous Coward]

have flying cars,

They're called "airplanes", they were invented in 1903

microwaves that you can put forks in

I don't know why you'd want to put a fork in a microwave, but microwavable forks have been around since before microwave ovens. They're called "plastic".

better televisions
Mine is 42 inches diagonal and with a flat screen and a remote control. Lots better than the one I bought in 1977, 27 inches (the biggest they had) curved screen w/ no remote.

magic food pills
Huh? What's that? I take a vitamin pill every morning to make up for the lack of vitamins in the grocery food. Izzat what you mean?

etc...

You mean Star Trek tech like automatically opening doors; CD players; DVDs; VCRs; cell phones; eye implants that cure nearsightness, farsightedss, cataracts, and astigmatism; heart stents; pacemakers; portable defriblators; roomba; robot lawnmowers; space ship one... 'nuff?

Instead we have gas guzzling cars

Which don't guzzle near the gas they did when they had carburators and distributors, and don't spew lead fumes. We also have hybrids now.

Microwaves using decades old technology

My mom's first microwave had a knob (how quaint), while mine has a popcorn button, a beverage button, an "add thirty seconds" button, and a turntable.

TV incompatibilities up the wazoo

I have no idea WTF you're referring to; my TV works with cable, it works with a rabbit ear, and there aren't any signals it won't decode.

...and fake sugar pills sold on SpikeTV at 2am.

How young are you, son? Five? You act like you've never seen any innovation in your life.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, so each trademark or patent you would want someone to claim a value for. Then annually pay some amount of tax on that. So if "slashdot" and the logo "./" are trademarks, they would be taxed annually. And if slashdot owned the patent on "weblog: process in which entries are made displayed in a reverse chronological order on a website" they would pay a tax as well.

Also would you allow the trademar or patent go up and down in value? A patent for weblog might not be useful when you file, but the whole net is blogging suddenly its value would increase.

So besides lawyers and accountants who is making money on this? I see a lot of costs associated with this much like sales tax costs. Also if my factory is producing products with my patents of my trademarks and I am paying sales taxes, property taxes, etc ... seems like this is another additional tax duplicating those taxes.