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Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

arstechnica.com

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Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#61

Post by Symmetry »

WildUtah wrote: post #17
dangrossman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about the web the year Mosaic was released. Before 1993 there were no web browsers that ran in Windows. There were no web search engines yet. There was little more than static hypertext webpages for research labs. There may well not have been other client-server applications yet... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web

Gopher and Archie and some remote identity/finger protocols already did most of the things the interactive web does today long before Mosaic showed up. There have been many beautiful advances since then in usability, bandwidth, user base, and especially integration with outside services. None of those things constitute inventions in the sense of being technological, novel, and non-obvious. Which doesn't stop absolute…

The number of patents the patent office receives has increased exponentially over the years and the patent office's resources have barely increased at all. They aren't even allowed to keep all of the patent filing fees they receive anymore, and Congress has dictated in its wisdom that they aren't allowed to let the backlog of unjudged patents grow. So don't blame the people at the patent office, blame our lawmakers.

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#62

Post by Vivtek »

ohyes wrote: post #15

The real issue here is the hegemony that gives a single coalition governments the ability dictate worldwide patent and copyright law. It seems that if that didn't exist, people interested in innovating and creating great, new, things would just go to the countries that didn't have forcefully draconian IP laws. Sure, maybe there are some advantages to having patents, but in their current form for software, they are a…

In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed.

I think this is really naive. People who do dishonest things and get rich from them are not regarded as a problem in America - they're celebrated as clever guys and put on Forbes magazine's cover.

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#63

Post by arethuza »

alain94040 wrote: post #18

Before you panic, read the claims. From claim 1, the most limiting element I can see is: wherein said embed text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke said executable application to execute on said client workstation So you are potentially in trouble only if you use text format to point to an executable that you then load to the client. Indeed, what we used to do on the Internet around 1993 (Gopher…

I wrote a framework for safely launching and controlling applications from web browsers in '93 - presented a paper on it at the first web conference at CERN in '94.

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#64

Post by VMG »

Vivtek wrote: post #62
ohyes wrote: post #15

The real issue here is the hegemony that gives a single coalition governments the ability dictate worldwide patent and copyright law. It seems that if that didn't exist, people interested in innovating and creating great, new, things would just go to the countries that didn't have forcefully draconian IP laws. Sure, maybe there are some advantages to having patents, but in their current form for software, they are a…

In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed. I think this is really naive. People who do dishonest things and get rich from them are not regarded as a problem in America - they're celebrated as clever guys and put on Forbes magazine's cover.

Any examples?

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#65

Post by jbjohns »

VMG wrote: post #64
Vivtek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed. I think this is really naive. People who do dishonest things and get rich from them are not regarded as a problem in America - they're celebrated as clever guys and put on Forbes magazine's cover.

Any examples?

Mark Zuckerberg?

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#66

Post by Symmetry »

four wrote: post #37

I just love this. Lots of dick-swinging and heart-bleeding and whining and greed. There is no right side in this. Everyone just wants their way. The web is not some inalienable right handed down from God for the betterment of humanity. It's a clever idea that lots of people find handy. Kleenex and eyeglasses are clever, too. I don't see a movement to free tissue paper. Why is anyone shocked by the prospect that it ma…

The web is not some inalienable right handed down from God for the betterment of humanity. Yes, that's why I feel sad when the people who meaningfully brought us the web get sued by people who didn't.

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#67

Post by jstclair »

Jach wrote: post #59
jstclair wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In politics/activism, this is usually referred to as "heightening the contradictions". That strategy only works, however, if you have a fairly optimistic view of history and progress. If you don't, the strategy is just as likely to produce a dramatically worse outcome.

I was going to ask the GP, I'll ask you instead, can you think of concrete historical cases where pointing out a ton of problems led to a dramatic reform instead of just slight tweaking that ends up introducing more problems? Can you think of cases where (bad) --causes alone--> (worse) --causes alone--> (incredibly better)? (It seems to me it's more of an ebb and flow of good/bad.) The sentiment seems especially popu…

It's a bit unclear what you're asking - are you looking for historical examples where heightening the contradictions has actually led to a good resolution? Because I was definitely arguing against that. Or examples where it's made it worse? For the latter, the most event would probably be Nader.

Dramatic and successful reform has happened, of course. Look at Upton Sinclair, the Chicago meat-packers, and the rise of muckraker journalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker

Re: Patent troll claims ownership of interactive Web—and might win

#68

Post by astrodust »

dwyer wrote: post #45
astrodust wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and by extension Nathan Myhrvold are the ones running wild with patent lawsuits and using patents to strong-arm software companies. Microsoft claims FAT32 is an important, patented invention, and is trying to wrestle back control of SMB through the same tactics. SCO's legal assault against Linux is part of all this. They've also successfully fought against Android and are now exacting stiff taxes on a lot o…

>Apple surely has an enormous stockpile of software patents, but their lawsuit activity has been pretty limited. Yes, $100 million on lawsuits in one year is pretty limited. http://www.itproportal.com/2012/01/24/apple-spent-staggering...

Clearly Apple does not use bargain basement lawyers.

Secondly, why is that surprising that the largest tech company gets some enormous legal bills? You think Google's budget is just a couple of million?

By the way, Google's going after a chunk of the iOS pie by claiming patent violations: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/09/google-after-2-25-of-every-ip...

So much for being "open".

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