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Apple has a small army of henchmen used to "silence" any company employees that leak information. Apple should send these guys after the patent holder and end his greedy nonsense once and for all.
 
There is understandably a lot of anger about this. It is wrong. However it does not mean that we have the right to go out and commit revenge, e.g. seriously sabotage the patent troll's property. I am sure some of you are thinking it: hack their servers, cause havoc etc. But you know, it's not a good idea. Because it's not playing nice. JUST 'COS YOU'RE ANGRY AT SOMEONE DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE THE RIGHT DO DEFEND YOURSELF or civilization against them. That is the sanctioned authority's job, e.g. courts. Can you imagine the problems you'd cause the plaintiff if you made it difficult to operate? They might not be able to fulfill their duties to stakeholders, let alone put food on the table. PLEASE DON'T DO IT.

I'M JUST SAYING. PEACE OUT.
 
Apple has a small army of henchmen used to "silence" any company employees that leak information. Apple should send these guys after the patent holder and end his greedy nonsense once and for all.

Feels eeringly familiar solution when thinking of human history... :eek:
 
Quick Wiki lookup, I believe I am correct:



Thousands of them before the end of the 1980s. Elios invented nothing, just took something that already existed which hundreds of companies were already producing and applied it as a patent to the emerging internet before anyone else thought to do so. That makes them 100% patent trolls.

Maybe Apple can sue them for copying Hypercard.
 
It's always something with these damn law suits. I swear people never give up, but I am sure there's reason, isn't there always reason?
People are retarded I swear.
 
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if MS doesn't actually own a lot of these patent holding companies. They could put up a half hearted attempt at trial, but loose on purpose, and it would set a precedence, and make it more difficult for MS's competition to go to trial. IANAL.

You're close, but that's not quite it. The extra-terrestrial invasion force circling in a wide orbit around Saturn (you don't really believe that's a new ring, do you?) put Microsoft up to the whole thing. Eventually, our entire legal and social systems will crash under the weight of ridiculous patent filings, and the aliens will be able to waltz in without firing a shot (or beaming a death ray, or whatever).
 
I think Don Henley sang it best when he said "kill all the lawyers, kill them tonight."

From Shakespeare, actually. Of course, you'd be singing a different tune if you found yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit or government investigation.
 
UC Regents

Well, isn't the Regents of the UC system a public funded government agency ( state of California). Wouldn't it the make it a public domain item since they were paid by government funding, I.E. Taxation?


What about Hypercard, From the realm of pre os X. wasn't that a hypermedia system that allow IP use..... Pre WWW era?
 
The LAWYERS are the PROBLEM!

The lawyers are the true problem.​

They lobby our government against tort reform and patent reform with millions & millions of dollars and get tons of reward from it. And it's not a Repub/Dem thing either. Both parties are heavily lobbied by the legal groups to stop any type of reform because these legal industries are billion dollar industries.

The problem is, what public good do they really serve?

And why do our politicians not listen to the people?
 
Well, isn't the Regents of the UC system a public funded government agency ( state of California). Wouldn't it the make it a public domain item since they were paid by government funding, I.E. Taxation?


What about Hypercard, From the realm of pre os X. wasn't that a hypermedia system that allow IP use..... Pre WWW era?



no

late in the clinton administration and early in the bush administration they started with a plan to make universities self sufficient by doing research and being able to license the patents. it's a nice system because only the universities can afford to reseach long term science with no profits in the next quarter.
 
I really hate it when people registers some arbitrary patents just to let big companies pay out royalties or settlement. It just hinders the development of new technology. A really naïve thought but like that Volvo dude who invented the seatbelt didn't patent it because he wanted every car to have them installed. :p

if you read up on this patent it sounds legit. they had a working internet browser in 1993 doing things that we didn't see until the late 1990's. the patent was applied for in 1994 before Netscape existed.

it's almost like everyone in silicon valley took their ideas and made a ton of money of them without giving them anything back for coming up with the ideas in the first place
 
The argument for software patents is that many mechanisms that used to need wires and gears can now be created using general purpose machines (computers, process control, etc.) and software replace the physical mechanism.

The argument should not against software patents in general, but over broad or convoluted ones. Especially those that use novel terminology to avoid patent search engines that all the "biggies" use to try to avoid infringing.

"The process causes every binary digit to be transfered to the next higher order flip flop, then that result combined with the original register binary content, then the result transfered to the next higher order flip flop." (Oh, shift, shift, add, shift to multiply by ten).

That argument does not work though because the software does not replace the physical mechanisms. The general purpose computer replaced those physical machines, and that can be patented. The instructions for those older machines, whether they be punch cards or actual human interaction are algorithms. Instructions are algorithms, which is what software is. Since it has already a longstanding precedent that you can not patent algorithms, you should not be able to patent software, especially overly broad software patents like this one.

The idea that you can patent the use of an HTML tag to tell the browser that is needs to use a plug in is insane. The idea that you can patent the overly broad category of using AJAX techniques in web applications is beyond insane. If these patents are upheld, anyone who has a website is at risk for being sued for doing something that is totally obvious to any web developer.

Software patents need to be thrown out entirely, and this case is a perfect example of why.
 
For everyone that does programming and web editing, I understand this might sound like the most BS patent ever. But can anyone find useful example before 1994?

Hypercard was someting one poster mentioned. But there is no example of importing and modifying the technique to fit the Ineternet (i.e. Eolas patent is still legit, even after re-examination).

Perhaps, all these year (7+ year) I have been infringing on someone's legit patent :eek:
 
For everyone that does programming and web editing, I understand this might sound like the most BS patent ever. But can anyone find useful example before 1994?

Hypercard was someting one poster mentioned. But there is no example of importing and modifying the technique to fit the Ineternet (i.e. Eolas patent is still legit, even after re-examination).

Perhaps, all these year (7+ year) I have been infringing on someone's legit patent :eek:

That's the problem though, this patent is not legit. You can not patent algorithms or business methods. You can not patent a set of instructions. The patent office seems to take the view that they will give out a patent for anything and let the courts deal with the fallout. A bigger problem is that this specific district where all these patent lawsuits are filed is overly friendly to patent holders even though the supreme court has already set down precedent on these issues.
 
Isn't that actually what patents are for? You think of it first, it's legally yours. The patent is not for if you do anything with it or not. But did they think of it first though. Did calling for external applications to run embedded media in hypermedia documents exist before it was filed in 1994?

Well, from a civil political science perspective, that is not "what patents are for". Patents and copyrights exist to promote the development of works and technologies, not to promote thinking about maybe someday thinking more about making something.

The idea of a patent is to give the inventor time to (1) bring his idea to market, and (2) profit off that idea, before someone else can use the idea to make their own alternative (cheaper because they don't have to pay back the creditors from having been sitting in the basement trying to figure things out for several years).

The idea of a patent is not to promote some kind of an "idea economy" where so long as you can document you thought of an idea "first" every user of that idea (or any stemming from it) must pay you penance every day until the end of time.

This is primarily why software patents are ludicrous: it takes very little time to bring a software innovation to market and profit from it (not 20 years, the standard patent term in the US, which makes sense for a new type of engine but not so much for software which would undergo 20 generational rebirths in that time).

Software patents serve no other purpose than to stifle the industry, as they currently stand. A patent term of 12-18 months would be far more in keeping with the pace of software generations than 20 years, but I suspect the whole concept will just be thrown out instead.

I recall this was possible with Quicktime in Hypercard documents before that date if memory serves.

Edit: I also recall that the well-known pointing hand icon we see on clickable links also originated from Hypercard. And pretty much everything else too. The html internet is basically Hypercard networked from servers. So is the key word in their patent actually 'networked'? So they simply copied an existing and working concept to apply it to the new emerging internet technology before anyone else could. Like patenting the existing four wheels on horse buggies for use on automobiles.

Umm, yes, pretty much like that. This patent is nothing at all like Hypercard, because, you see, this is for embedding application code directed by a server on the worldwide web. Since the WWW didn't exist when Hypercard did its thing, obviously that's not prior art. The other flaw with software patents is that patent clerks are not exactly technology experts. Read the original Microsoft ruling and how the Viola prior art (which, IMHO, was completely solid) was thrown out primarily because the Viola developer didn't have the time to demonstrate it acting across a network (which MS appealed, but which appeal deferred to the original judge's judgement on the Viola question).

IMHO, for those asking "what hope does Apple have if MS forked over cash", the answer is threefold:

1. Apple/Google/etc have legal cause to revisit the Viola ruling from scratch, which was procedurally impossible in the MS appeal.

2. More recent rulings have been less friendly to product-less patent trolls (which Eolas arguably are, as they did not bring any product to market between their MS ruling and now, either).

3. Potential upcoming changes to patent law to exclude entirely or drastically reduce the impact of software patents may come in time to cause the whole thing to be thrown out of court.
 
Can someone get them to explain to me why they need to sue NOW? I mean this flagrant abuse of their intellectual property has been going on for years. What makes them raise a stink about it NOW instead of THEN?

The more time that they let go by, the more the patent gets used and the more they can claim in damages ;)
 
And the funny thing is, at the bottom of this forum is a Google Ad for submitting Patents :)

what's an ad? :confused:


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