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Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

blog.runwayfinder.com

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Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#71

Post by cookiecaper »

kragen wrote: post #67
tif wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the simple act of accepting a (free or otherwise) license from someone imply that that you accept their right to grant said license? Both parties I'm sure are aware of this; it's simply posturing on FlightPrep's part with the hope that RunwayFinder will be dumb enough to accept it and thereby lose in the long run.

No. The classic case of a license in common law is permission to enter someone's property. Consider this case: Me, opening the door to my apartment: Oh shit! There's a burglar in my living room! Burglar: I'm not a burglar! This is my apartment! I've owned it for ten years. Me: This isn't your apartment! It's my apartment! I bought it from Hugo López last year! Burglar: Hold on a second. As long as you don't lay your…

Are you a lawyer? Because it doesn't sound like the same standards would apply in your example and in a case of patent litigation.

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#72

Post by nphase »

gjm11 wrote: post #27
shrikant wrote: post #18

RunwayFinder says: They won’t talk to me. Instead I’m stuck dealing with their lawyers who twice said that if RunwayFinder pays a license fee (would you like 10% or 20% of zero?) or removes the website that they will drop the lawsuit. Unfortunately, they are now reneging on that and posturing for more. They are claiming damages of $3.2M per month. FlightPrep responds: http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runw…

What's the betting that the terms of that "free" licence involve some sort of admission of RunwayFinder's guilt, or of the validity of FlightPrep's patent?

From FlightPrep's blog [1]:

In spite of the foregoing, FlightPrep stands by its offer to grant a free-license to RunwayFinder to operate its website during this negotiation phase of our legal dispute. We are not asking RunwayFinder to shut down and in-fact are offering them a temporary free-pass at our technology in hopes that this gesture of goodwill will better enable both RunwayFinder and FlightPrep to constructively work toward a mutually beneficial long-term solution.

Constructively work toward a mutually beneficial long-term solution, eh? With patent enforcement? Sounds more like strong-arming RunwayFinder into a deal they wouldn't otherwise take to me.

[1] http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runwayfinder-sh...

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#73

Post by flipbrad »

Natsu wrote: post #63
pierrefar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are in the world. The European Patent Office explains: Virtually every patent office in the world (including the EPO and the JPO) is based on a first-to-file system. ... The USPTO, however, is the only office to be based on a first-to-invent system, meaning that a patent is granted to the person who first conceived and practiced the invention, rather than to the person who first filed the inventi…

I know that they want to change that, too, but I really hope they don't. Otherwise, the people who didn't think a thing was even worth patenting (or who couldn't afford to patent it) will have their inventions stolen from them. I will justify the use of "stolen" here by saying it's because they're no longer legally able to use their own idea. Restricting an idea via IP laws is one of the few ways an idea can actually…

i'm not sure that's true, necessarily. IANAL (yet), but unless I'm mistaken, a patent still has to be novel. So if they had publicly disclosed what they thought had no value... they could invalidate any later patent that tried to make it illegal for them to use their idea.

As for the obvious comeback - no, you shouldn't not make public something which you think has no value. Either patent it or stick it out there to inspire someone with a different vision to your own. Don't hoard without knowing how to execute, especially without believing it's worth executing. As far as I'm concerned if you're doing that you deserve no rights to your 'invention' even if someone then comes along and patents it.

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#74

Post by flipbrad »

Empedocles99 wrote: post #59

Premise: a) Many (most?) small software outfits, and software developers don't agree that software should be patentable. b) Some of us would be willing to pay an insurance premium against patent trolls Proposal: Form an organization (or convince an existing one like the EFF) funded (donations, I'd presume) by all of us to: a) Lobby for changes to to the patent process and law. b) Aggressively challenge obvious softwa…

you can presumably purchase before-the-event insurance anyhow. There just isn't a big market. But can you seriously EFF/etc to be that insurance, and have any money left over to lobby government (have you any idea what financial scale we are talking about? in the UK, the pro-patent lobby just got our government to reduce corporation tax on patent-derived income from 37.5% to 10% ! that takes some serious lobby clout) ?

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#76

Post by kragen »

cookiecaper wrote: post #71
kragen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The classic case of a license in common law is permission to enter someone's property. Consider this case: Me, opening the door to my apartment: Oh shit! There's a burglar in my living room! Burglar: I'm not a burglar! This is my apartment! I've owned it for ten years. Me: This isn't your apartment! It's my apartment! I bought it from Hugo López last year! Burglar: Hold on a second. As long as you don't lay your…

Are you a lawyer? Because it doesn't sound like the same standards would apply in your example and in a case of patent litigation.

I am not. Are you? Why do you think different standards would apply?

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#77

Post by tif »

kragen wrote: post #67
tif wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the simple act of accepting a (free or otherwise) license from someone imply that that you accept their right to grant said license? Both parties I'm sure are aware of this; it's simply posturing on FlightPrep's part with the hope that RunwayFinder will be dumb enough to accept it and thereby lose in the long run.

No. The classic case of a license in common law is permission to enter someone's property. Consider this case: Me, opening the door to my apartment: Oh shit! There's a burglar in my living room! Burglar: I'm not a burglar! This is my apartment! I've owned it for ten years. Me: This isn't your apartment! It's my apartment! I bought it from Hugo López last year! Burglar: Hold on a second. As long as you don't lay your…

But if RunwayFinder intends to attack the validity of the patent by claiming obviousness or something similar, I see the analogy as more like:

me: This was no-one's apartment when I got here. There are thousands like it, in fact an infinite supply. Get your own.

burglar: Well, we'll work that out in court. In fact I own all of them.

me: No, it was public land and I just built my apartment here.

burglar: Well, how about you sign this lease. Just put your John Hancock here, and I won't give you any trouble about staying here. I won't even charge you any rent this month.

With the above dialog, doesn't the signing of the lease imply an acceptance of the burglars ownership of not only this apartment but all of these apartments?

I am not a lawyer, obviously, just someone who likes analogies.

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#78

Post by cvos »

shrikant wrote: post #18

RunwayFinder says: They won’t talk to me. Instead I’m stuck dealing with their lawyers who twice said that if RunwayFinder pays a license fee (would you like 10% or 20% of zero?) or removes the website that they will drop the lawsuit. Unfortunately, they are now reneging on that and posturing for more. They are claiming damages of $3.2M per month. FlightPrep responds: http://blog.flightprep.com/2010/12/regarding-runw…

You are 1 day late, you missed this simple solution to retain your rights

http://hustlebear.com/2010/12/14/how-to-handle-lawyers-threa...

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#79

Post by fingerprinter »

mmastrac wrote: post #25
Vivtek wrote: post #11

Oh, good Lord, when the patent was filed, RunwayFinder was already online . Talk about prior art! This kind of abuse just boils my blood, especially when it involves this kind of penny-ante bullshit, the whole rent-seeking mentality of identifying a niche market that could really benefit from more open information and then trying to dominate it for chump change.

EDIT: A comment below notes that this is a divisional patent and might have a date in 2001: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008772 On the other hand, there's lots of prior art for drawing flight information on maps. Here's a video game from the 1980's that I played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9i1drUg8c#t=2m15s =========== It's easy to validate the claims that RunwayFinder forms prior art for the patent, as…

Ok, I read the claim, looked at the dates and have to say this...WTF?

When I was in college I worked on a system for a government affiliated agency doing research into flight simulators and other aviation related software. The exact project I worked on did this patents claim as base functionality before we did the hard work. This was 1996. That technology had been around for, oh, probably 4 years at this point.

I'm 100% sure that this software was not productized to be seen by the patent office (nor was a patent filed by this agency...), but this technology has existed in one form or another since the invention of networked computing and having computable aviation data.

Re: Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder

#80

Post by clavalle »

flipbrad wrote: post #74
Empedocles99 wrote: post #59

Premise: a) Many (most?) small software outfits, and software developers don't agree that software should be patentable. b) Some of us would be willing to pay an insurance premium against patent trolls Proposal: Form an organization (or convince an existing one like the EFF) funded (donations, I'd presume) by all of us to: a) Lobby for changes to to the patent process and law. b) Aggressively challenge obvious softwa…

you can presumably purchase before-the-event insurance anyhow. There just isn't a big market. But can you seriously EFF/etc to be that insurance, and have any money left over to lobby government (have you any idea what financial scale we are talking about? in the UK, the pro-patent lobby just got our government to reduce corporation tax on patent-derived income from 37.5% to 10% ! that takes some serious lobby clout)…

There are over a million software engineers and computer programmers in the U.S. Say, 15% were convinced to give $30 a month (or their employers). That would be over 50 million a year for operations. That is not including other donations that would be solicited, or fees payed by other interested parties such as hardware manufacturers, venture capitalists and the like.

Now will $50 mil. be the death knell for the pro software patent lobby? No, there are big companies with very deep pockets that would fund the other side well, but it is a fine start.

Of course, my hope would be that the $50 mil. would mostly go to crushing trolls in court, sucking up tasty patents, building and maintaining a solid resource of precedent and prior art in this area and setting good precedent and leave the bulk of the lobbying to donations above and beyond the collected fees.

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