The one sentence summary of what they have had acknowledged as their invention is not the title of the patent. It is normally "Claim 1". And, of course, any other independent claims. The claim reads: "A hybrid vehicle, comprising:
at least two pairs of wheels, each pair of wheels operable to receive power to propel said hybrid vehicle;
a first alternating current (AC) electric motor, operable to provide power to a first pair of said at least two pairs of wheels to propel said hybrid vehicle;
a second alternating current (AC) electric motor, operable to provide power to a second pair of said at least two pairs of wheels to propel said hybrid vehicle
a third AC electric motor;
an engine coupled to said third electric motor, operable to provide power to said at least two wheels to propel the hybrid vehicle, and/or to said third electric motor to drive the third electric motor to generate electric power;
a first alternating current-direct current (AC-DC) converter having an AC side coupled to said first electric motor, operable to accept AC or DC current and convert the current to DC or AC current respectively;
a second AC-DC converter having an AC side coupled to said second electric motor, operable to accept AC or DC current and convert the current to DC or AC current respectively;
a third AC-DC converter coupled to said third electric motor, at least operable to accept AC current and convert the current to DC;
an electrical storage device coupled to a DC side of said AC-DC converters, wherein the electrical storage device is operable to store DC energy received from said AC-DC converters and provide DC energy to at least said first and second AC-DC converters for providing power to at least said first and second electric motors; and
a controller, operable to start and stop the engine to minimize fuel consumption."

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/i4i-ltd-v-microsoft-corp-ed-tex-2009-texas-style-the-order-from-judge-davis-gets-right-to-the-point---in-accordance.html

As another EPA, I wish there were a page we could point people to with some basic bits of patent law on it just to calm everyone down a bit...

Thank Dawkins! Finally, someone who gets substantive patent law on Slashdot!

Really, there should be a page we can point people to who misunderstand the concepts of novelty, inventive step, and scope of protection...

Because often, aspiring artists are not being courted by many labels simultaneously. Remember, most in the music business are looking, and perpetually waiting, for their "big break" - a major label offering them a contract. No-one will turn down a label because they think they'll do better with another. Labels are not a service industry for musicians. Musicians are raw material for the labels' products.

Carbolic Smoke Ball says otherwise...

"The case concerned a flu remedy. The manufacturer advertised that buyers who found it did not work would be rewarded £100, a considerable amount of money at the time. The company was found to have been bound by its advertisement, because a contract was formed. The Court of Appeal held the essential elements of a contract were all present, including an offer, acceptance, consideration and an intention to create legal relations."

I believe that it has some precedential value in the US.

I really hate to have to point this out, but almost everything on the internet is copyrighted, in some aspect or another, at least. In fact, nearly everything has some copyrighted component.

I refer you to the US copyright office, with similar provisions applying in almost every other Berne-convention country (including my very own UK).

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork

"When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created."

Copyright is not acquired, it is merely asserted.

Google cannot possibly have a policy that it only indexes works in which no copyright subsists. I suspect the real policy is that Google removes items from the index if there is a reasonable case that they are infringing copies of a copyright work, or that accessing them is likely to constitute infringement of copyright.

I am a patent attorney [obligatory "you insensitive clod"] before the British and European Patent Offices. Please excuse the slightly off-topic comment, but I'm not sure we're all particularly evil. I see a lot of patent-attorney bashing here on Slashdot. Mostly what we actually do is provide the best possible advice to our clients based on the current state of the law, and argue their case for them in what has evolved to be a very complex legal system. At the same time, we have a fun job which involves dealing with five or so different technologies on our desks on a daily basis, getting up to speed with them quickly and then thinking up detailed and powerful legal and technical arguments to deploy as to why our client's technology might just be worth the grant of a 20-year monopoly, or conversely, why our client's competitor's technology isn't. Most of us have higher technical qualifications, as well as our legal training. In many ways, it's a geek's dream...

Now, the people to whinge about are a) the legislators, and b) the patent offices themselves, who don't always do the best job of examining the patent applications as rigorously as they could. At least the situation is a bit better here in the EU than in the States, though, where as soon as a patent examiner gets any good he goes and qualifies as an attorney...

Interesting. So $2/hour is acceptable to pay for an hour's gameplay, whereas $3/hour is excessive...

Achievement please :-) Thank you kindly, sir...

Really? Surely you know that many forms of two-way radiotelephone misuse can also lead to heavy punishment in many jurisdictions.

Equivalently, in Europe and the UK, such compilations can be protected by both database right and copyright in compilations/databases.
For database right to subsist, the qualifying factor is the level of investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database - but not in the creation of the data themselves. In the notable Fixtures Marketing cases, lists of sport fixtures did not attract database right, because the effort involved in the determination of the fixtures at first instance was not qualifying investment.
For copyright in a table or compilation to exists, there must be skill, labour or judgement by the author of the table in its compilation. A slavish listing of facts cannot attract copyright. For copyright in a database to subsist, the selection or arrangement of the contents of the database must be the author's own intellectual creation.

There are more of us on here than you think (part-qualified British and European Patent Attorney)... NewYorkCountryLawyer is among the most high-profile (and, to give him his due, cogent and clear in his writing) of the legal commentators on here.