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Comment Re:Summary is wrong, read the patent (Score 2, Interesting) 274

Does your ide include: "receiving, on a recipient messaging device, a text communication sent from a sender messaging device, wherein the text communication comprises at least one shorthand term;"? This the first limitation of the first independent claim.

It might be obvious to add into a messaging device, but the USPTO would need to find a couple of prior art references that contain all the features and then show a reason to combine them. The PTO doesn't get to just say, "it would be obvious to do that, kneener kneener kneeeener"

Comment Re:Divergent Interests (Score 2, Informative) 164

I guess the status as legal advice matters in a couple of contexts. If it is legal advice then there may be malpractice issues if the advice is bad. There may be a attorney/client relationship and all the duties of loyalty that go along with it. If it is legal advice then the corporation may be committing the unauthorized practice of law.

If it isn't legal advice, then you want to go look to contract and sale of goods laws. The law surrounding warranty would likely apply, though many warranties may be disclaimed. As far as I know, there are no particular laws for complex versus simple products. There are default warranties such as the implied warranty that a good is capable of performing its particular purpose (this warranty can be disclaimed by the seller though). Product liability and warranty disclaimer is a tricky bit of law, hence the 15 million pages of disclaimers we get when we purchase something, which we are all assumed to have read.

Comment Re:Divergent Interests (Score 4, Interesting) 164

In light of the topic, I am not giving anyone legal advice nor do my comments intend to replace, compliment, or supplement the enlightened advice of an attorney in your state. In fact, I might be completely wrong so do not rely on anything I say. These are merely my uneducated opinions on the topic at hand.

Interstingly, Legalzoom is a corporation and as such, is not legally allowed to provide legal advice. Many states, allow for Limited Liability Partnerships which as similar to corps. but do not entirely insulate an individual from a lawsuit. In an LLP, one partner is not liable for the malpractice of another partner, but each is liable for his/her own malpractice. Thus, LLPs do not provide absolute insulation from professional liability but the firm as a whole is insulated for another's liability.

Corporations have much broader insulation for shareholders to encourage investment. LLP's aren't allowed to have non-professional investors. Thus, if the LLP is a law firm then only lawyers may invest in the LLP. If the LLP is a medical practice, then only doctors. Basically, most states don't want to guarantee no liability for people in these fields but still want to encourage efficient partnerships. Thus, the LLP was formed.

The fact the Legalzoom exists as a corporation tends to promote the idea that these form providers are not handing out legal advice, at least not under the definition of the states where they provide there forms. Of course, they may be "risking" it and might be in violation of some state's law, but I didn't take the time to go check any individual state's law on the unauthorized practice of law with reference to "legal" forms. There is likely some case law out there with respect to tax forms and wills/trusts forms since people have been publishing self-help books with template forms in those areas for decades.

Comment Re:see Sourceforge... (Score 1) 428

We set up eGroupware, http://www.egroupware.org/ for a 100 person school team. Our team was a legal journal and we need time logs, knowledge base (Q/A), wiki for instructions, project management, resource tracking, task management, and document management. It has a long way to go but we installed at 1.43 and the group is still using it a year later.

Comment Re:patented in 1993 (Score 1) 227

I wonder how accurate that really is. I mean, home use of the internet was not prevalent until at least after Win. 95 came out. And I mean prevalent in the percentage of Americans on the internet not the percentage of computer users on the internet. Compuserve and AOL were going strong as ISPs, 14.4 modems were higher end at this time while 28.8 was on the way. I remember a lot of software had codes your had to type in and hardware dongles were all over. It would be interesting to see what systems were really out there at this time. Windows 95 certainly didn't have remote activation, you just typed in the code on the CD cover IIRC.

Comment Re:Marshall, TX (Score 1) 227

Jurisdiction can be based on where the harm occurs. Has anyone purchased software product (*pick one from above*) in the E.D. of Texas? Then infringement happened there and jurisdiction is proper. Are the companies selling their products in Bestbuys, Walmarts, or other retailer located in the E.D. Texas? Do they advertise there? Maintaining an office in the jurisdiction is just one of the factors, but for patent infringement it is pretty easy to meet the test for jurisdiction in just about every district in the U.S. I imagine for software, it would even easier.

Comment Re:Marshall, TX (Score 2, Interesting) 227

My understanding is that the favorable juries are why plaintiffs tend to sue in the E.D. of Tex. The relatively high value of property rights (just look at the laws for using deadly force to protect property in Texas) and the lower average education level of the jurors leads to higher percentages of verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs and much higher damages calculations.

The other factor, is that the judges tend to fast track the patent dockets so from start to finish the average time spend on trial is much shorter in the E.D. of Tex. than in other districts (though there are faster places, but not many).

Comment Re:Windows 12 (Score 1) 366

A mutex is a way of controlling access to a shared resource. Imagine you have a car with one key. If you and your sibling both want to use the car for the night, the key is the mutex. Whoever gets the key first gets to use the car until they put the key back.

/. loves car analogies, right?

Comment Re:law vs. law (Score 2, Informative) 466

Well, looking at it from a U.S. perspective it would depend. First you have to look at whether the laws truly contradict and who passed the laws (state v. federal). If law A was passed by congress in 1980 and a contradictory law B was passed by congress in 1990, then law B trumps. The courts would say that law B supersedes law A and congress intent must have been for law A not to apply any longer. This is because congress had spoken on the issue and now says something different. The newer law must reflect congress current intent on the law rather than out of date view of the older law.

Now things change if we are talking about state passing a law and congress passing a law. You have to do a whole bunch on constitutional analysis at that point. State rights vs federal power.

Comment Re:All software is math. (Score 1) 392

All circuits are math too. Should those be patentable? They are physical embodiments of math, but math none the less. Of course, circuits are also chemistry. But look at 802.11, its just a radio + DSP + faster circuits. The radio already existed and DSP is just math. The faster circuits weren't made for 802.11 per se, but certainly made it possible. In the end, 802.11 is just math...

Comment Re:Patents aren't the problem (Score 3, Informative) 392

the fact that they can't be proactively challenged

This is not correct. Any person can file a reexamination request and present a substantial new question of patentability with the USPTO. Here is a wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reexamination. So if anyone has some publication that should invalidate a patent, by all means attack it. Also, there a declaratory judgment actions that can be used to initiate a lawsuit before the patent holder sues you. However, the patent holder needs to take some action that makes the likelihood of a future lawsuit quite high.

Comment Re:An eIPO often seems like (Score 2, Interesting) 118

I am not a fan of Facebook, but lets think about what you said. What other site has risen to the level of popularity that Facebook has? And have those sites disappeared or lost popularity? We can start with Yahoo I suppose. Still huge, still around, and a completely different set of services offered. Geocities? eh, maybe but they were only popular with a segment of the internet population at a time when being on the internet was not cool. (Plus I never cared for Geocitie's pages) MySpace? While certainly their status has declined, hey are still kicking. Plus, Facebook actually pre-existed MySpace, then experienced a decline to MySpace, and has now far surpassed MySpace.

I would argue that AIM and ICQ are the closest analogies. Except that Facebook replaced them. Those services were designed to connect people and now Facebook does that (arguably better). Sure some people still use those services, but a lot of people just use Facebook for those things.

I guess my point is, please name the flash-in-the-pan popular sites you are referring to that have reached Facebook's level of pervasiveness in society? I only ask, because I have been on the net since '90 and cannot think of another and I am really trying. I am not saying there isn't a site out there that I am forgetting or that there isn't a site that I never knew about, but I would be really surprised.

Slashdot has been around a long time and has a dedicated following, is it a flash-in-the-pan popular site? I mean, /. is really a place for people who were/are on the forefront of the emergence of the Net into our lives. Can anyone think of any single site that crosses more culture, economic, or age brackets? Say what you want, but they did something right. And picking themselves up from their bootstraps to comeback from near-defeat at the hands of MySpace is something to be respected.

Comment Re:claims (Score 1) 657

No mod points, so I just wanted to say thank you to the parent. Those claims do not cover sudo. Congratulations to the OP on using scare tactics to get to the front page os /. Well played good sir, well played.

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