Comment Re:Treble? (Score 1) 205
By that argument, anything ever made was "discovered." I discovered that when I ran electricity through a filament, it lights up. And I discovered that I can encase it in glass.
Agree to disagree.
By that argument, anything ever made was "discovered." I discovered that when I ran electricity through a filament, it lights up. And I discovered that I can encase it in glass.
Agree to disagree.
So any new process that is invented - like something equivalent to the invention of the process to make steel - cannot be patented? Yeah, that seems like a great idea.
Thank you, thank you, 1000 times thank you.
Right on all accounts.
IAAL.
True patent trolls, entities that solely exist to acquire patent portfolios and weaponize them for profit, do not know anything about the content of the actual patent.
Straight up WRONG. For every non-techie litigator that a patent troll has, there is a technical patent attorney with an engineering degree that is supporting the litigator.
I say this having represented defendants in about a dozen patent troll cases.
Sincerely,
A patent attorney with a comp. sci. degree
I guess it's not cynical for me to recognize everyone on slashdot is a torch-and-pitchfork wielding anti-corporation zealot either, huh? I mean, you guys have been proving me right for about a decade now.
why do I even bother to come here?
Try being a patent attorney and coming to slashdot every now and then.
An ITC finding of invalidity does not "bust a patent," it merely prevents relief through the ITC. An Article III court, e.g., a federal district court, does not have to give any weight to the ITC's validity finding, meaning the patent is still valid for "normal" law suit purposes.
Showed you THE RESULT, not the method. The patent claims the method. And please give me specific examples of this occurring "digitally" and "online" since the mid-90s, given that the web didn't really take off till 96 or 97.
wtf are you talking about? These are just law firms that apply for patents, you know, maybe for completely legitimate companies. There is nothing in the article or the summary that says these lawyers help patent trolls. You DO realize just because it involves patents doesn't automatically make it about patent trolls.
FFS man, torch and pitchfork much?
Anyone that wishes physical harm on someone because they dislike their profession is not "right minded."
And lest you think I can't take a joke, I can, it's just not funny.
Hi, I'm an IP attorney. Thanks for wishing biological warfare - boils, seizure, death - on me because you don't agree with my profession.
And you say we are jerks.
BUT, the fact the PHOSITA didn't come up with it but for your question, indicates it isn't obvious. In other words, if it's so obvious, why hasn't it been done before?
And the one-click patent still stands after several looks at it by the patent office. Have you actually ever looked at the claims, or do you - like most hear - just assume it's obvious? It's a pretty narrow patent despite its moniker.
With all due respect, you didn't provide any citation to the basis of your statement. I've never seen anything that says patents used to be awarded for things other people couldn't figure out without the patent.
Geekoid wasn't very eloquent, but his point stands.
Anthony, thank you again. These are well articulated, well thought out issues and for whatever it's worth, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to write them. I think we're on different sides of the river, but I can at least see why you prefer your side to mine. I won't convince you mine is better, but here are my thoughts on it.
To respond to your limitations issue, I hear what you're saying - most of the claim is scaffolding and there's really only one interesting nugget of invention. This is often the case because there needs to be context and antecedent basis. It sounds like what you'd prefer is if everyone wrote a Jepson claim. A Jepson claim is where you say:
A system|method for blah blah blah
... wherein the improvement comprises:X.
In those claims you are acknowledging all the prior art and laying out the single improvement, which is X. Then everyone automatically knows what's novel and what's not. The problem with those from a patentee standpoint is: everyone automatically knows what's novel and what's not. What if I thought steps A and B of my process were obvious when in fact they weren't and I said the improvement was just step C. Well I just gave up all rights to A and B. And to turn your own issue on its head, there is no way for me know - no seer I can consult - to know if what I am giving up is actually in the prior art. Let's consider the yard and fence analogy. If a surveyor didn't exist to say where exactly your property line was, when you set up a fence around your house, do you set it up as far out as you think you're reasonably entitled, or do you put it as close to your house as you can so you don't offend anyone? It's the same thing. Why would I intentionally give up claim scope? I can understand why that's a greedy approach, but I hope you can see - it is to me at least - that it's a reasonable one.
Re: the uncertainty, you can get no more certainty that you don't infringe than you can that someone hasn't copied unlicensed code into your codebase. You can take steps to address the latter, e.g., code monitoring and review, but you never really know unless you have a development team of one - yourself. That's a risk of doing business. You can mitigate the risk - for code hire a code scrubber (which admittedly has a finite data set to compare against), and for patents get a freedom to operate opinion - but you'll never be free of the uncertainty. I don't know what to tell you.
As a final question: where are all the stories of big companies completely crushing the little guys in legal fees? Everyone throws it around as a problem, but it seems that more often than not the big companies are fighting each other or the trolls are going after the big guys. I know David and Goliath battles are academically possible, but where are they in reality? I'm not even looking for a case cite; I'm looking for even just a news article that says Company X was a big meanie and used its patents to crush li'l ol' Y. It's bandied about as a scary possibility; I just want to see a real-world example of it.
*Moore's Law
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.