Amen to everything jragosta has posted so far in this thread.
You are generally very sensible, fair-minded, lucid, and insightful.
Keep up the good work. Those of us who are too tired to counter ignorance and trolling salute you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Speaking of trolls, how about the people who don't have any concept of how patent law works who keep making up arguments against "patent trolls".
This has been discussed ad nauseam previously. There is absolutely nothing in US Patent law which requires the inventor to exercise their patent in order to protect it. If there were, small inventors would be out of the game. There are many, many inventions which it would be impossible for a small inventor to practice - so you'd essentially make it impossible for many inventors to profit from their inventions.
Same as a factory owner. If I own a factory that makes widgets and decide not to manufacture widgets for some reason, is it OK for GM or Ford or GE to move into the factory and start making widgets because I'm not using it? Of course not. So why should intellectual property be any different?
Start by learning about patent law. Patents are not about protecting unimpeded sale of a product. Patents are an exclusive right to exercise the invention. If I invent something and then patent it, no one else has the right to use that invention without a license from me. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I am selling a competing product or not.
No, it's all about the money. There is no message.
They buy up IP for the sole purpose of filing lawsuits. They have no product. They have no intention of making one. They are a lawsuit machine. They always file in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas... that has always been a huge red flag. Yes, they are the very definition of patent trolls.
It seems we may have some new people here who are not familiar with them and their MO. It has been going on for many years and those of us who have been around here for a while are very familiar with them and others like them. It's always the same story.
They don't just go after Apple but pretty much every major player with a lot of cash. It's just that Apple has been a big target the past few years.
Patent law is a joke. It needs to be changed so one has to make a product for the patent to be enforceable. If this means small inventors are hurt and put out of business, so be it. This isn't the days of Edison anymore. What do small inventors actually invent these days other than bogus patents to sell to patent troll firms? All this does is drive up the cost of products by legit firms like Apple and Microsoft.
I wondered the exact same thing a couple months ago and looked it up in Apple's legal documents. Although there is almost no mention of Macintosh on the Apple site, in their Trademarks section there is this:
1. You may not use the Mac trademark standing alone except to denote or refer to the Apple Macintosh product line.
Also :
In addition to the Mac OS X built-in security features, the Macintosh Products Guide contains offerings from third-party providers that could help to increase the security of your system in particular situations.
And this:
Apple Certified Macintosh Technician (ACMT) Certification
Purchases of an Apple Macintosh computer and a qualifying printer must be made at the U.S. Apple Online Store, an Apple Retail Store located in the U.S...
They want an injuction on these devices. Their message is simple, "steal our ip and we'll go thermonuclear on you". Oh wait someone else said that...
I don't understand what your purpose is in saying this.
Are you claiming that a company who uses zero patents to make zero products is the same situation as a company who uses hundreds of patents to make dozens of products and who has had their revenue stolen by a company who is somehow magically getting away with the blatant theft of every single imaginable facet of the products they sell?
No, it's all about the money. There is no message.
They buy up IP for the sole purpose of filing lawsuits. They have no product. They have no intention of making one. They are a lawsuit machine.
So what?
Let's say you inherit a widget factory and you decide that you don't want to make widgets, so you sell the factory to a real estate broker. The broker also doesn't want to make widgets, but they believe they can lease it to someone who will.
Does the fact that the broker is not making widgets give some third party the right to move into the factory and start making widgets? Of course not.
Now, substitute 'patent' for 'widget factory' and you'll see how silly your argument is.
Patents are property. The owner has the right do do whatever they want with it and no one has the right to start using the patented technology without permission. It's that simple.
Now, there is a reasonable argument about that particular court in TX being a problem, but I saw some figures once and it's not as bad as people claim. There are others where patent holders have similar odds of winning. In any event, one bad court does not make the entire patent process invalid. At worst, one might use that court as an argument for changing the rules for venue.
I don't understand what your purpose is in saying this.
Are you claiming that a company who uses zero patents to make zero products is the same situation as a company who uses hundreds of patents to make dozens of products and who has had their revenue stolen by a company who is somehow magically getting away with the blatant theft of every single imaginable facet of the products they sell?
These situations are similar to you?
All I'm saying is people who blatanly copies someone else's invention needs to be held accountable. You have the same views. Somehow the fact that the company doesn't make a product doesn't mean that they shouldn't protect their IP.
All I'm saying is people who blatanly copies someone else's invention needs to be held accountable. You have the same views. Somehow the fact that the company doesn't make a product doesn't mean that they shouldn't protect their IP.
There's protecting one's IP and then there's "sitting on a patent for 18 years for the sole purpose of dead-legging a company that in the interim has built a successful product which may or may not use it".
I thought the to patent something you had to have very specific details included in the application - not just some vague notion.
But I guess gone are the days when a court decides that BIOS can be reversed engineer provided no one on the reverse engineering team had access to the original designs that created the product which was reverse engineered.
I have no problem with a patent being granted for an idea - but if someone else comes up with an entirely different solution to a problem that appears to be very similar than I don't think that is infringement.
Samsung style copying of an interface element or design is one thing - but in my mind - "establishing a secure connection between one electronic device and another" is not a patentable idea. A specific implementation of that idea should be protected.
I have no idea how many "mouse trap" patents there are (hundreds? thousands?) but "a device used to trap mice" is not the basis for a patent. A specific manner in which a device traps a rodent should be protected - even if that device as described is impossible or prohibitively costly to build and never sees the light of day. I believe there have been patent lawsuits over the type of spring use in a mouse trap as that is what made it unique. And even Thomas Edison was smart enough to patent not the "light bulb" but a particular screw base which made replacing a light bulb simply and effective.
Not sure how much of that applies in software patent suits but it does seem that basis on which patent infringement is determined varies from cases to case and being a highly subjective matter means that such cases aren't going away anytime soon.
You have actually nailed one of the key problems with the current US patent law. I don't know if yout realize that :-).
The basic Idea behind the Patent law was to promote progress and developmemt by giving an inventor a time-limited monopoly IN RETURN for the inventor publishing the invention in sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art to be able to reproduce it.
What has happened in the meantime is that the fundamental idea has been turned upside down in many respects and it is actually now the opposite of what is intended. ... being used to BLOCK development and perpetuate monopolies.
Many patents are so vaguely formulated that nobody, not even an expert, can decipher what they actually mean. This is no accident. And if an expert thinks he can understand the patents, he is probably seriously wrong unless he is also an expert in patent law. In fact, it has become an art in and of itself to turn a patentable idea into an actual patent application.
There are a number of perversions of this problem. For example, it is frequently the case that an idea in and of itself is not patentable, and then some idiot comes along and adds the words "on a computer" and the USPTO and the Patent Appeals court has accepted this with the effect that the non-patentable idea suddenly becomes patentable if it is implemented in software.
The story goes on and on. What has been lost is of course that this perversion of purpose is utterly against the public interest.
There's protecting one's IP and then there's "sitting on a patent for 18 years for the sole purpose of dead-legging a company that in the interim has built a successful product which may or may not use it".
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time and try to set up a deal with them regarding their patent. But they didn't, they went ahead and used their intellectual property without their consent, in the hopes that they wouldn't find out. Same as what happened with the Swiss Clock app. I agree that Virnetx are losers for trolling like this, but they had an idea that they patented, and Apple felt it was good enough to steal. So now Apple needs to pay up.
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time…
Put the brakes on. It is the responsibility of both parties to FIRST enter into negotiations whenever a patent issue is raised. Not go sue-happy off the cuff. Apple KNEW Samsung was stealing from them. Apple's first course of action was NOT to sue Samsung. Apple wanted to make a deal. Samsung refused, THEN Apple sued.
THAT is how you operate. Not like this. VirnetX has no excuses for this behavior.
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time…
Put the brakes on. It is the responsibility of both parties to FIRST enter into negotiations whenever a patent issue is raised. Not go sue-happy off the cuff. Apple KNEW Samsung was stealing from them. Apple's first course of action was NOT to sue Samsung. Apple wanted to make a deal. Samsung refused, THEN Apple sued.
THAT is how you operate. Not like this. VirnetX has no excuses for this behavior.
Is that a fact :-), then how, may I ask, do you explain Apple's refusal to enter into negotiations on FRAND with Motorola, chosing not to negotiate at all but to sue and try to get a court to impose a one-sided-apple-advantage ?? Apple does not dispute stealing Motorola's IP in this matter, they are just refusing to pay.
And remember that line had already been thrown out of court once before (Posner Judgement).
Apple does not dispute stealing Motorola's IP in this matter, they are just refusing to pay.
Shut up or stop lying. It's a pretty simple concept to understand. You already refuse to have an actual e-mail address, meaning you're obviously just someone who we've already banned.
If our new rule suggestions go through, you'll be out faster than you can make new fake accounts.
Speaking of trolls, how about the people who don't have any concept of how patent law works who keep making up arguments against "patent trolls".
This has been discussed ad nauseam previously. There is absolutely nothing in US Patent law which requires the inventor to exercise their patent in order to protect it. If there were, small inventors would be out of the game. There are many, many inventions which it would be impossible for a small inventor to practice - so you'd essentially make it impossible for many inventors to profit from their inventions.
Same as a factory owner. If I own a factory that makes widgets and decide not to manufacture widgets for some reason, is it OK for GM or Ford or GE to move into the factory and start making widgets because I'm not using it? Of course not. So why should intellectual property be any different?
Start by learning about patent law. Patents are not about protecting unimpeded sale of a product. Patents are an exclusive right to exercise the invention. If I invent something and then patent it, no one else has the right to use that invention without a license from me. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I am selling a competing product or not.
There should be a legal obligation for the patent holder to sell a long unused patent, at cost, to a company that will immediately commercialize it, lest consumers be denied or delayed access to valuable technology. In the end, all laws must serve the greater good.
Comments
Amen to everything jragosta has posted so far in this thread.
You are generally very sensible, fair-minded, lucid, and insightful.
Keep up the good work. Those of us who are too tired to counter ignorance and trolling salute you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Speaking of trolls, how about the people who don't have any concept of how patent law works who keep making up arguments against "patent trolls".
This has been discussed ad nauseam previously. There is absolutely nothing in US Patent law which requires the inventor to exercise their patent in order to protect it. If there were, small inventors would be out of the game. There are many, many inventions which it would be impossible for a small inventor to practice - so you'd essentially make it impossible for many inventors to profit from their inventions.
Same as a factory owner. If I own a factory that makes widgets and decide not to manufacture widgets for some reason, is it OK for GM or Ford or GE to move into the factory and start making widgets because I'm not using it? Of course not. So why should intellectual property be any different?
Start by learning about patent law. Patents are not about protecting unimpeded sale of a product. Patents are an exclusive right to exercise the invention. If I invent something and then patent it, no one else has the right to use that invention without a license from me. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I am selling a competing product or not.
Yes, found it!
No, it's all about the money. There is no message.
They buy up IP for the sole purpose of filing lawsuits. They have no product. They have no intention of making one. They are a lawsuit machine. They always file in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas... that has always been a huge red flag. Yes, they are the very definition of patent trolls.
It seems we may have some new people here who are not familiar with them and their MO. It has been going on for many years and those of us who have been around here for a while are very familiar with them and others like them. It's always the same story.
They don't just go after Apple but pretty much every major player with a lot of cash. It's just that Apple has been a big target the past few years.
Originally Posted by mrrodriguez
Yes, found it!
Except for THESE clowns, it's ONLY about the money.
Originally Posted by 1984
They buy up IP for the sole purpose of filing lawsuits.
This company does?
Patent law is a joke. It needs to be changed so one has to make a product for the patent to be enforceable. If this means small inventors are hurt and put out of business, so be it. This isn't the days of Edison anymore. What do small inventors actually invent these days other than bogus patents to sell to patent troll firms? All this does is drive up the cost of products by legit firms like Apple and Microsoft.
Also, China and India should just flat out refuse to recognize US IP laws. They should just copy at will.
I guess it still is "Macintosh." You'd think a lawsuit would properly name the products that were infringing.
Should? Don't they already do that?
Originally Posted by cylack
Also, China and India should just flat out refuse to recognize US IP laws. They should just copy at will.
There's zero reason you should think this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Except for THESE clowns, it's ONLY about the money.
This company does?
They want an injuction on these devices. Their message is simple, "steal our ip and we'll go thermonuclear on you". Oh wait someone else said that...
Originally Posted by mrrodriguez
They want an injuction on these devices. Their message is simple, "steal our ip and we'll go thermonuclear on you". Oh wait someone else said that...
I don't understand what your purpose is in saying this.
Are you claiming that a company who uses zero patents to make zero products is the same situation as a company who uses hundreds of patents to make dozens of products and who has had their revenue stolen by a company who is somehow magically getting away with the blatant theft of every single imaginable facet of the products they sell?
These situations are similar to you?
So what?
Let's say you inherit a widget factory and you decide that you don't want to make widgets, so you sell the factory to a real estate broker. The broker also doesn't want to make widgets, but they believe they can lease it to someone who will.
Does the fact that the broker is not making widgets give some third party the right to move into the factory and start making widgets? Of course not.
Now, substitute 'patent' for 'widget factory' and you'll see how silly your argument is.
Patents are property. The owner has the right do do whatever they want with it and no one has the right to start using the patented technology without permission. It's that simple.
Now, there is a reasonable argument about that particular court in TX being a problem, but I saw some figures once and it's not as bad as people claim. There are others where patent holders have similar odds of winning. In any event, one bad court does not make the entire patent process invalid. At worst, one might use that court as an argument for changing the rules for venue.
I don't understand what your purpose is in saying this.
Are you claiming that a company who uses zero patents to make zero products is the same situation as a company who uses hundreds of patents to make dozens of products and who has had their revenue stolen by a company who is somehow magically getting away with the blatant theft of every single imaginable facet of the products they sell?
These situations are similar to you?
All I'm saying is people who blatanly copies someone else's invention needs to be held accountable. You have the same views. Somehow the fact that the company doesn't make a product doesn't mean that they shouldn't protect their IP.Originally Posted by mrrodriguez
All I'm saying is people who blatanly copies someone else's invention needs to be held accountable. You have the same views. Somehow the fact that the company doesn't make a product doesn't mean that they shouldn't protect their IP.
There's protecting one's IP and then there's "sitting on a patent for 18 years for the sole purpose of dead-legging a company that in the interim has built a successful product which may or may not use it".
Quote:
Originally Posted by lilgto64
I thought the to patent something you had to have very specific details included in the application - not just some vague notion.
But I guess gone are the days when a court decides that BIOS can be reversed engineer provided no one on the reverse engineering team had access to the original designs that created the product which was reverse engineered.
I have no problem with a patent being granted for an idea - but if someone else comes up with an entirely different solution to a problem that appears to be very similar than I don't think that is infringement.
Samsung style copying of an interface element or design is one thing - but in my mind - "establishing a secure connection between one electronic device and another" is not a patentable idea. A specific implementation of that idea should be protected.
I have no idea how many "mouse trap" patents there are (hundreds? thousands?) but "a device used to trap mice" is not the basis for a patent. A specific manner in which a device traps a rodent should be protected - even if that device as described is impossible or prohibitively costly to build and never sees the light of day. I believe there have been patent lawsuits over the type of spring use in a mouse trap as that is what made it unique. And even Thomas Edison was smart enough to patent not the "light bulb" but a particular screw base which made replacing a light bulb simply and effective.
Not sure how much of that applies in software patent suits but it does seem that basis on which patent infringement is determined varies from cases to case and being a highly subjective matter means that such cases aren't going away anytime soon.
You have actually nailed one of the key problems with the current US patent law. I don't know if yout realize that :-).
The basic Idea behind the Patent law was to promote progress and developmemt by giving an inventor a time-limited monopoly IN RETURN for the inventor publishing the invention in sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art to be able to reproduce it.
What has happened in the meantime is that the fundamental idea has been turned upside down in many respects and it is actually now the opposite of what is intended. ... being used to BLOCK development and perpetuate monopolies.
Many patents are so vaguely formulated that nobody, not even an expert, can decipher what they actually mean. This is no accident. And if an expert thinks he can understand the patents, he is probably seriously wrong unless he is also an expert in patent law. In fact, it has become an art in and of itself to turn a patentable idea into an actual patent application.
There are a number of perversions of this problem. For example, it is frequently the case that an idea in and of itself is not patentable, and then some idiot comes along and adds the words "on a computer" and the USPTO and the Patent Appeals court has accepted this with the effect that the non-patentable idea suddenly becomes patentable if it is implemented in software.
The story goes on and on. What has been lost is of course that this perversion of purpose is utterly against the public interest.
Sad really.
There's protecting one's IP and then there's "sitting on a patent for 18 years for the sole purpose of dead-legging a company that in the interim has built a successful product which may or may not use it".
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time and try to set up a deal with them regarding their patent. But they didn't, they went ahead and used their intellectual property without their consent, in the hopes that they wouldn't find out. Same as what happened with the Swiss Clock app. I agree that Virnetx are losers for trolling like this, but they had an idea that they patented, and Apple felt it was good enough to steal. So now Apple needs to pay up.Originally Posted by mrrodriguez
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time…
Put the brakes on. It is the responsibility of both parties to FIRST enter into negotiations whenever a patent issue is raised. Not go sue-happy off the cuff. Apple KNEW Samsung was stealing from them. Apple's first course of action was NOT to sue Samsung. Apple wanted to make a deal. Samsung refused, THEN Apple sued.
THAT is how you operate. Not like this. VirnetX has no excuses for this behavior.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Originally Posted by mrrodriguez
All Apple needed to do was contact them ahead of time…
Put the brakes on. It is the responsibility of both parties to FIRST enter into negotiations whenever a patent issue is raised. Not go sue-happy off the cuff. Apple KNEW Samsung was stealing from them. Apple's first course of action was NOT to sue Samsung. Apple wanted to make a deal. Samsung refused, THEN Apple sued.
THAT is how you operate. Not like this. VirnetX has no excuses for this behavior.
Is that a fact :-), then how, may I ask, do you explain Apple's refusal to enter into negotiations on FRAND with Motorola, chosing not to negotiate at all but to sue and try to get a court to impose a one-sided-apple-advantage ?? Apple does not dispute stealing Motorola's IP in this matter, they are just refusing to pay.
And remember that line had already been thrown out of court once before (Posner Judgement).
Your reality-distortion-field is showing.
Originally Posted by Taniwha
Apple does not dispute stealing Motorola's IP in this matter, they are just refusing to pay.
Shut up or stop lying. It's a pretty simple concept to understand. You already refuse to have an actual e-mail address, meaning you're obviously just someone who we've already banned.
If our new rule suggestions go through, you'll be out faster than you can make new fake accounts.
There should be a legal obligation for the patent holder to sell a long unused patent, at cost, to a company that will immediately commercialize it, lest consumers be denied or delayed access to valuable technology. In the end, all laws must serve the greater good.