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Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

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Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#71

Post by krschultz »

noonespecial wrote: post #65
cookiecaper wrote: post #6

This is good. We need more of these things to happen so that we can get some power behind the anti-software-patent lobby. Software patents have to become too dangerous to keep around, and that happens by things like this; right now, Microsoft and others use patents to lord over Linux and make vague threats about litigation. This is an important part of Microsoft's strategy, so software patents are important to them.…

Would it be possible (and IANAL so I've got no idea) to simply not make your products available in this whacked out district of east Texas? Just refuse to ship by mail or retail to any address in the district in order to make sure the trolls can't force you into this venue? It would be no small measure of poetic justice if in return for making themselves an enormous public nuisance and doing irreparable harm to the p…

Federal Court so afaik enforced nation wide.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#72

Post by noonespecial »

krschultz wrote: post #71
noonespecial wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be possible (and IANAL so I've got no idea) to simply not make your products available in this whacked out district of east Texas? Just refuse to ship by mail or retail to any address in the district in order to make sure the trolls can't force you into this venue? It would be no small measure of poetic justice if in return for making themselves an enormous public nuisance and doing irreparable harm to the p…

Federal Court so afaik enforced nation wide.

Indeed the results are enforced nation wide.

The question is; why do trolls seem to always be able to force the venue to be this tiny court in Marshall Texas where all the cards seem stacked against the defendant? Is there any way to prevent this?

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#73

Post by seldo »

voidpointer wrote: post #33
steveklabnik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting rid of software patents altogether is quite extreme. Really? I'd think that most people in software have the opinion that there should be no software patents at all. It's kind of silly, frankly.

The software companies themselves often argue that they don' really want software patents. However, the fact that other can file patents puts them into a position where they need to file patents themselves for protection. It's just a stupid arms race. Now and then, a patent troll with noting to lose shows up and shakes up the picture. You could call it a sort of IP terrorism :-)

I think using the phrase "IP terrorist" rather than "patent troll" would make it much easier to sell to congress why these patents are a bad idea.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#74

Post by rlpb »

philwelch wrote: post #45
cloudkj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that, rather than banning software patents outright, the process by which these patents are approved should be put under high scrutiny and changed. For a lot of large companies, the approach really is similar to throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. Having gone through the process recently, I'm amazed at how easy it is for an engineer to conceive an idea, pitch it to a few paralegals…

Software is (uniquely?) protected two ways--the source code and object code are both protected by copyright, and the algorithms may be protected by patent. One form of protection should be sufficient. Arguably, software is also protected by trade secret, either because it's difficult to decompile object code into anything meaningful or because it's hosted and run on a server that no one else is allowed to see.

> it's difficult to decompile object code

This is getting easier and easier with languages like Ruby and Python becoming more mainstream.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#75

Post by dantheman »

ghshephard wrote: post #60
dantheman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right? Copyrights & Patents are not natural in a free market; they're government creations. Remember patents and copyright only exist to encourage people to produce, not because you're entitled to profit from it. As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce. Most small companies don't even bother patenting ideas because they don't…

"As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce." There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth w…

Agreed, I do recognize that patenting physical things has benefits. My earlier post was with respect to software patents only. I'm against patents and copyright for ethical reasons, but software patents have no excuse for existing.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#76

Post by ghshephard »

kelnos wrote: post #63
ghshephard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce." There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth w…

Somewhat hypothetical, but: how difficult is it to reverse-engineer a drug's exact composition with only the final product (the pill/vaccine/etc. itself)? If it's difficult enough to be economically infeasible, then patent protection here could be replaced by simply keeping the drug a secret. Of course, that kills the generics market, and I suspect it's not such a difficult problem to RE a drug, but... just curious.

That is exactly what companies would do, with the resulting loss in the knowledge of how to make these drugs to society.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#77

Post by jrockway »

rlpb wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is (uniquely?) protected two ways--the source code and object code are both protected by copyright, and the algorithms may be protected by patent. One form of protection should be sufficient. Arguably, software is also protected by trade secret, either because it's difficult to decompile object code into anything meaningful or because it's hosted and run on a server that no one else is allowed to see.

> it's difficult to decompile object code This is getting easier and easier with languages like Ruby and Python becoming more mainstream.

But of course, most Ruby and Python applications are safely hidden away on a server you control. Relatively few "closed-source" Ruby and Python applications are distributed directly to the user.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#78

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ghshephard wrote: post #60
dantheman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right? Copyrights & Patents are not natural in a free market; they're government creations. Remember patents and copyright only exist to encourage people to produce, not because you're entitled to profit from it. As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce. Most small companies don't even bother patenting ideas because they don't…

"As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce." There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth w…

Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth would they have any incentive to do that if, once it was approved, they didn't have a temporary monopoly on it?

Patents, and Supplementary Protection Certs (SPC) which extend drug patents to 25 yrs in the UK IIRC, are temporary.

Also it's always worth remembering that drug companies spend vastly more (3 times, might even be 4) on marketing than on producing drugs and make humongous profits.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#79

Post by rbanffy »

voidpointer wrote: post #33
steveklabnik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting rid of software patents altogether is quite extreme. Really? I'd think that most people in software have the opinion that there should be no software patents at all. It's kind of silly, frankly.

The software companies themselves often argue that they don' really want software patents. However, the fact that other can file patents puts them into a position where they need to file patents themselves for protection. It's just a stupid arms race. Now and then, a patent troll with noting to lose shows up and shakes up the picture. You could call it a sort of IP terrorism :-)

IIRC i4i is not a patent troll. It's a company with real products, users and - and that prevents it from being called a patent troll - probably licenses the patents from others.

I am all in for banning obvious or bad patents, as well as shortening their duration, but, perhaps, the i4i patents may be really original or innovative.

Microsoft is known for talking partnership, maybe acquisition, learning all they can and then launching a competitor that kills their "partner". Having strategic patents is the only way a small company can defend from this.

Also, I like the way their name sounds. Sounds appropriate.

Re: Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word

#80

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kelnos wrote: post #63
ghshephard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As of right now there is very little in the way of evidence that patents in anyway contribute to encouraging people to produce." There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth w…

Somewhat hypothetical, but: how difficult is it to reverse-engineer a drug's exact composition with only the final product (the pill/vaccine/etc. itself)? If it's difficult enough to be economically infeasible, then patent protection here could be replaced by simply keeping the drug a secret. Of course, that kills the generics market, and I suspect it's not such a difficult problem to RE a drug, but... just curious.

They have to disclose the contents to be licensed for medical purposes.

My wife did a stint as a student with AstraZeneca (global pharma corp) they were making "new" drugs. One thing they do is take an existing drug and try swapping out different parts for functionally equivalent parts and run tests to see if the drug is effective enough to warrant proper trials and check to see if it circumvents the opposition patents.

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