193845
submission
greenbird writes:
Another patent fiasco has started. From Wired, a patent on location based internet searches was filed in 1996 and granted in 1999. A patent troll company name Geomas acquired the patent and has filed what they claim will be a long line of lawsuits in none other than Marshall, Texas against Verizon. Geomas has amassed a $20 million war chest in venture capital to use for getting rich off of a clearly obvious idea. When will it end?
144047
submission
greenbird writes:
It's the beginning of the end (in the US at least). This Forbes article starts with information about a company, DeepNines, who is suing McAfee over a patent that covers combining an IDS and firewall in a single device. The patent was filed on May 17, 2000 and issued on June 6, 2006. Aside from the thousands of linux boxes configured as prior art (including several by me) and the fact that it took 6 years to issue the patent, DeepNines in a January 29, 2003 press release announced a partnership with McAfee to deliver just such integrated solutions.
The Forbes article then goes on to recount the coming apocalypse in the form of investment companies gathering billions of dollars exclusively to fund patent troll companies and lawsuits from such companies one of which is using innovative investment technique's to fund DeepNines in the above lawsuit against McAfee. Is this the end of the tech industry in the United States? Will we all have to move to Europe or Antigua to develop anything new? Will the US manage to drag the Europe into this IP cesspool leaving China, Russia and India as the tech innovators of the world?
136541
submission
greenbird writes:
Techdirt has information from Daniel Berninger documenting prior art in the Verizon patents being used to destroy Vonage. So a successful company and possible an entire market may be undermined or destroyed by blatantly invalid patents. From the article:
"In particular, the claims in both patents were anticipated by open standards assembled by the VoIP Forum (H.323) in 1996 and published in January 1997 with the participation of members from Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, and Vocaltec Communications, among others."
and
"The Eric Voit patent applications reflect, in particular, contributions made by VocalTec Communication to the VoIP Forum during 1996 and formally published at the same time as a separate document."
