61–70 of 74 posts
I'll go back to listening to spotify via a vpn through our sever in London. An IP curtain has descended across the continent...
Until recently, I thought that the patents issue was a PITA, but not that big of a deal, and something that would eventually pass after a lot of damage is done. Now, I really believe that unless things change, the US is going to have a lot of trouble attracting new businesses to start at home, or foreign companies providing services in the US. Spotify will run their own cost benefit analysis of fighting the lawsuit v…
Way too much money has been poured into buying massive patent portfolios by the big boys, from Apple & Co. to Paul Allen. If some upstart Congressman suddenly tried to pass a law to invalidate them, you can bet multi-millions would be spent to prevent that and get him/her unelected.
A compromise that protects startups in some way may be the best we can hope for at this point, I'm afraid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in 1992 we used to stream music over the network of Sun machines at St. Andrews university[1]. The way we did it was pretty trivial: just piping into rsh from and to /dev/audio. However it was certainly streaming of music by anyone's definition. [1] Making the admins of said network mighty pissed off in the process -- I believe the whole campus was on 10 Mbps at the time.
From what I can tell reading the patent, what you describe would not be prior art. Two things would need to be present -- DRM of some sort. And music metadata. These are two things that I suspect Spotify makes use of. I suspect you probably didn't at St Andrews for your streaming, but let me know if you did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in 1992 we used to stream music over the network of Sun machines at St. Andrews university[1]. The way we did it was pretty trivial: just piping into rsh from and to /dev/audio. However it was certainly streaming of music by anyone's definition. [1] Making the admins of said network mighty pissed off in the process -- I believe the whole campus was on 10 Mbps at the time.
From what I can tell reading the patent, what you describe would not be prior art. Two things would need to be present -- DRM of some sort. And music metadata. These are two things that I suspect Spotify makes use of. I suspect you probably didn't at St Andrews for your streaming, but let me know if you did.
I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…
The answer, I have come to realize, is no. It will always be no. Ridiculous examples do not drive change. The only thing that will drive change is a direct attack on John Doe (aka patenting the mRNA polymerase gene and demanding licensing fees from everyone) or collaborative effort that has a direct effect on John Doe- for example, a "strike" by a large number of significant companies, or a "dark knight" who uses patents to completely shut down a very popular company like Apple and thus incite the people.
I am a pessimist, I know, but honestly if you've paid attention these past few years, you'll have noticed that obscene patent stories just keep coming.
I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…
To be honest I don't see the difference. For any given complicated piece of hardware, you can build an equally complicated piece of software. For every simple software patent out there, there is an equally ridiculous non-software patent (e.g., foot-pedal washing sinks)
I think whatever your stance on the issue of patents is, you shouldn't treat software as a special case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed -- I also think 2 years in software is would be considered sufficient time to have a technological advantage over your competition. Maybe even 3 years. But I think it's currently 11 or something like that isn't it? In 11 years I'll probably be half robot... that seems like a long time.
It's 17 years. The 2-year software patent wouldn't fix other problems, such as the impossibility of determining novelty or nonobviousness in a field as varied and active as software. It's not wise to give the patent office an impossible job, when case law is largely based on presumption of validity.
In Europe and other jurisdictions the protection period is 20 years from date of filing (rather than starting at the date of grant). There's patent reform legislation currently being considered that would make this improvement to US patent law (and, yes, you understand correctly that the typical software patent review takes more than 3 years, often much longer. That makes the terrible job they do all the more inexcusable, even though companies do game the process with things like claim amendments). In any case, you're absolutely right that the 2-year software patent doesn't solve the novelty and non-obviousness issues.
I'd add that a 2-year software patent would have to be 2 years from date of filing. Anything starting at date of grant would be far too long. Unfortunately, a 2-year from filing software patent would mean that you'd need to speed up USPTO review by an order of magnitude and make it higher-quality. If anyone can come up with a way of doing that that is better than a robot just stamping "No" on every application, I'd be pretty impressed.
I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…
I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws The answer, I have come to realize, is no. It will always be no. Ridiculous examples do not drive change. The only thing that will drive change is a direct attack on John Doe (aka patenting the mRNA polymerase gene and demanding licensing fees from everyone) or collaborative effort that has a direct effect on John Doe…