11–20 of 285 posts
I've never heard a good argument against this so I'll say it here: Require that the plaintiff in this cases show demonstrable, actual , and quantifiable loss by the activity of the defendant. It seems like such a no-brainer that a business suing for damage to it's business prospects after someone stole their idea would have to actually show how it was damaged. Even allowing very flimsy evidence would do a lot to diss…
I've noticed a Techcrunch comment that makes this fight about software patents and states that forbiding them would be a good solution. I think that's a very wrong view to take. The software patent fight is worth fighting, but do not conflate the two issues. Abuse by patent trolls or non-practicing entities can happen even without software patents. The law patch that shuts down patent trolls will have no effect on so…
I don't think many do conflate the two, I think most people just don't see value in software patents. Software is great because it has no cost to copy, so when someone creates a new algorithm it can be put in use everywhere applicable rapidly. This pace of advancement is so awesomely powerful that many do not appreciate how much positive change it can bring or how different the world was just a few years ago. An adva…
Long time ago certain Philadelphia area law firms decided to represent vegan protesters that created a major mess in a couple of high end restaurants.
A certain flamboyant owner of one the restaurants targeted decided to have a good time applying his version of asymmetric warfare. The next partners from those law firm showed up to wine and dine their clients in the establishment, the establishment(s) politely refused the service to the utter horror of the lawyers.
Needless to say, the foie gras won...
[Edit: spelling]
I've never heard a good argument against this so I'll say it here: Require that the plaintiff in this cases show demonstrable, actual , and quantifiable loss by the activity of the defendant. It seems like such a no-brainer that a business suing for damage to it's business prospects after someone stole their idea would have to actually show how it was damaged. Even allowing very flimsy evidence would do a lot to diss…
I've noticed a Techcrunch comment that makes this fight about software patents and states that forbiding them would be a good solution. I think that's a very wrong view to take. The software patent fight is worth fighting, but do not conflate the two issues. Abuse by patent trolls or non-practicing entities can happen even without software patents. The law patch that shuts down patent trolls will have no effect on so…
You want to patent sticky scrolling? Then put the entire source code required for it into the patent.
You want to patent your AI tech? Then put the entire code into the patent.
Additionally, we should make sure that trade secrets are not protected in any way, and decompiling code to find out what it does, and replicate it, is legal, as long as it doesn’t violate patents.
These measures would provide reasonable measures for companies wanting to protect their secret sauce, but also ensure that this technology is all public and available for research, and that after a few years it becomes available to competitors.
Otherwise we’ll end up with Google, Amazon, etc piling up knowledge and patents, without ever giving anything back to society.
And if you now try to argue with Google being "good", please take a look at ReCaptcha, where they take captcha associations given by users, but never publish the resulting recognition data (which then could be used by open source projects or researchers), or look at Android, where Google has now closed everything they could.
I've noticed a Techcrunch comment that makes this fight about software patents and states that forbiding them would be a good solution. I think that's a very wrong view to take. The software patent fight is worth fighting, but do not conflate the two issues. Abuse by patent trolls or non-practicing entities can happen even without software patents. The law patch that shuts down patent trolls will have no effect on so…
I don't think many do conflate the two, I think most people just don't see value in software patents. Software is great because it has no cost to copy, so when someone creates a new algorithm it can be put in use everywhere applicable rapidly. This pace of advancement is so awesomely powerful that many do not appreciate how much positive change it can bring or how different the world was just a few years ago. An adva…
I've never heard a good argument against this so I'll say it here: Require that the plaintiff in this cases show demonstrable, actual , and quantifiable loss by the activity of the defendant. It seems like such a no-brainer that a business suing for damage to it's business prospects after someone stole their idea would have to actually show how it was damaged. Even allowing very flimsy evidence would do a lot to diss…
Let's say I invent something really useful but also very difficult for an individual to take advantage of, like a new kind of airplane nosecone that shaves 10% off fuel costs for very large airplanes. Now, I'm not in the airplane business, and getting into it would take many, many millions of dollars. Probably the only way for me to make money on this would be to go to Boeing or some similar company and license my pa…
Thanks for the insight either way, great thought.
I'm not a fan of the argument that if Blackbird weren't a NPE it'd be okay because Cloudflare could then aim it's 150 strong patent portfolio cannon back at them. It's basically saying incumbents like Cloudflare don't really want to fix the system, they want to keep the untenable 'cold war' status quo which protects them but burdens new entrants.
The fact is that most patents for things that are "invented" but entirely virtually don't really deserve patent protection. Rarely is there significant research, expense or tooling to implement. Patents on software, processes and most extension patents are ridiculous in premise. That's what trade secrets are for.
It is all about finding a correct pressure point. Long time ago certain Philadelphia area law firms decided to represent vegan protesters that created a major mess in a couple of high end restaurants. A certain flamboyant owner of one the restaurants targeted decided to have a good time applying his version of asymmetric warfare. The next partners from those law firm showed up to wine and dine their clients in the es…
I've never heard a good argument against this so I'll say it here: Require that the plaintiff in this cases show demonstrable, actual , and quantifiable loss by the activity of the defendant. It seems like such a no-brainer that a business suing for damage to it's business prospects after someone stole their idea would have to actually show how it was damaged. Even allowing very flimsy evidence would do a lot to diss…
Patents are not about damages. A patent is a limited-time monopoly to an idea that you can then extract value from. Inventing something, patenting it, and then licensing it out is exactly the business model patents are supposed to enable. Companies that don't make anything are perfectly valid under this model. The real solution is to either make sure prior art and non-obviousness requirements are properly enforced or…
Obviousness is the key issue for me. I suspect most people, even those who work in the technology fields, are not aware that it is considered essentially impossible to prove obviousness (source: I have worked as a consultant on several patent litigation cases). So you have the ridiculous situation that almost everyone in the relevant field believes that almost all patents granted are obvious, but almost no litigation succeeds in finding that same conclusion.