or even if you deliver a product containing the invention in question, without publishing a description of how it works. Publish or ship => prior art, unless they filed before you did that. If you really want it to be open, then publishing is the simplest path.

IANAL. I don't think this approach would do anyone any good. Either the new patent is a sufficient improvement on the prior art (and non-obvious) or it isn't. If it is, expiry of the earlier patent makes no difference. If it isn't, it is unlikely to be granted.

In any case, even if someone gets the patent, there isn't an existing market of infringing systems, so no real opportunties for a predator.

Of course the PTO can be (and has been) fooled. Eolas v. Microsoft. Eolas persuaded the PTO that their technology differed from prior art, then persuaded a jury that software using the prior art infringed their patent.
      Tony

I am inventor on 30 or so patents, with a few more in the pipe. My (ex-)employer owns the rights to these. Neither of us has gained any value form these patents. My personal experience is that patents lead to the company getting sued, and I get deposed.

The process for granting patents, and the legal process for deciding infringement cases, are both horribly broken.

this is third hand, but...

In the UK they built a synchrotron, and when they turned it on all the lights dimmed in the surrounding area on every cycle. They installed a bunch of flywheels coupled to motor/generators. These were *big* flywheels, maybe 1 ton each.

The story is that one came off its bearings one day and went throught three buildings before it stopped,
      Tony

I read Penrose' book a long time ago. He seemed desparate to deny that consciousness could be built out of logic of any form.

For me the best part was his argument that if you could build a machine that exhibited human-like consciousness, it would necessarily deny that it was built that way. My reaction was "yes, just like you".

Much as I admire the work of Norman and Nielsen, I have to say that this report is 70% crap and 30% useful.

Discoverabilty is important, but with limited screen space is a challenge as yet unsolved.

Consistency would be great, but see below.

We're at the beginning of this technology, not the end. We can't expect it to stay in a usability lab until all the answers are known and agreed by competing suppliers. The world is the usabilty lab, and sales are the measure of usability. There is no mechanism to achieve agreement among competitors unless you want a 7 year standards committee process.

We are no longer in a world where our IT dept dictates what device we buy.

Dave Bradlee has an app that lets anyone experiment with redistricting plans, at http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html Sadly, it's Silverlight :-)

I left Microsoft about 18 months ago, with no ill feelings. I can tell you that within the company, with a very few exceptions, people take personal privacy very seriously. With a service like NCSI the only time anyone might look at the logs would be to diagnose a problem. Just possibly someone might count IP addresses per country to compare with sales, to estimate piracy rates. If an employee needs to access the crash report database, she must sign an agreement to protect the privacy of the person whose computer crashed. The exceptions are the a**holes whose job is to sell online ads, and who want any and all information that they pray will help them target the ads more effectively. As far as I know, none of the techniques have been shown to be effective.

I left Microsoft about 18 months ago, with no ill feelings. I can tell you that within the company, with a very few exceptions, people take personal privacy very seriously. With a service like NCSI the only time anyone might look at the logs would be to diagno

RedHat might think they are taking advantage of the trolls to their own benefit, but it will bite them in the end. Otherwise, I think we are in agreement.

[Resubmitting] Settling is the worst thing to do if the patent is bogus. You become a target for others, and you bankroll the troll to go after others. I was involved in an infringement case. The troll had scammed the PTO into granting a patent that allegedly covered technology I had developed some years earlier. They claimed infringment against my employer's product which used my technology. The legal case was mishandled and we lost at trial. Years went by with appeal, and a limited retrial was scheduled. Meanwhile we wrangled with the PTO over invalidating the patent. They did not want to make a decision. Finally, when the retrial date was imminent, we were on the verge of invalidating the patent. The company decided that given the limitations on the retrial, it would be better to settle. The settlement was 10% of what they had been demanding, presumably because of the likely invalidation. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to withdraw the interference. I hated the settlement, but it wasn't my decision. The troll now still has a bogus patent and is suing a whole lot of tech companies.

How do I get back the text of the comment I submitted while not logged in, so I can resubmit?

the anonymous coward comment was me. I didn't realise I wasn't logged in.