Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or an automatic re-examination on litigation.
The results of the re-exam would always be litigated, every time.
That's still an improvement.
Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
171–180 of 189 posts
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would appear, based on many incidents underway at the moment, that the software patent apocalypse is beginning. All software infringes something, so it should get interesting. Hopefully the absurdity will stink so badly that even the U.S. congress will do something.
And you think that a Congress that lets the economy slide towards depression in favor of the rich at the expense of the rest of us really gives a damn about patent reform. Except for what their handlers want. Apologies. This comment is not worthy of a HN regular, but I am feeling really cranky these days.
Many people in large technology companies are threatened by software patentes, and spend lots of time and money defending and preparing to defend against them. Were these people (who are among the richest in the world) left out of the controlling congress conspiracy club?
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would not be surprised if the patent office itself used this method for filing patent information in various DBs.
Every filesystem in the world probably uses this method. The identity function (i.e. storing an item under its own name) seems to be a special case.
No, the patent claims the identifier is derived from the data, and only the data, which a file name is not. It also have several other constraints and steps. (i.e. a patent describes a a system as a whole - the fact that individual parts of a patent is in wide use elsewhere doesn't necessarily mean those systems infringe or invalidate this patent)
One file system that comes to mind using the approach described in the patent is Venti though: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs240/readings/venti-fast.pdf
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patents cover areas of technology where developing a solution that can be commercialized at scale is much, much more expensive than software. Without patents, how is a pharma company expected to pay the enormous cost of research, development, and FDA approval of new drugs? Let's not let obvious flaws in software IP protection condemn the concept of patents in general.
> Without patents, how is a pharma company expected to pay the enormous cost of research, development, and FDA approval of new drugs? How about taxes? Drugs that are useful for millions of people can be subsidized --internationally even. It will make the system even less commercialized (i.e prone to go for quick bucks and BS drugs instead of proper medicine). Most of the more expensive drugs are of marginal utility a…
You are essentially arguing for a central planning approach, and we have ample evidence from the 20th century that this does not produce better outcomes than a market-based approach.
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#175The patents in question: http://www.google.com/patents/US5978791 http://www.google.com/patents/US6415280 http://www.google.com/patents/US6928442 http://www.google.com/patents/US7802310 http://www.google.com/patents/US7945539 http://www.google.com/patents/US7945544 http://www.google.com/patents/US7949662 http://www.google.com/patents/US8001096 http://www.google.com/patents/US8099420
Looks like most of these patents can be killed by prior art. The first one is hashing, for instance.
As mentioned elsewhere, a patent describes a system as a whole, and just because individual steps in a patent is/was in wide use elsewhere doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Saying that this patent is invalid because it uses hashing would be similar to invalidating every patent describing a device made of iron because iron was invented before.
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flow is not the same as supply. Noonespecial is talking about blocking things at source not by an intermediary.
Flow is not the same as supply Its like a synthetic variation, not a logically novel form of argument. The flow is cutoff when the supply is witheld. The supply is withheld when the flow is cutoff. Etc.
Cutting off flow is not the same as withholding supply.
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think someone hasn't done this already?
If someone had done it, that someone would be pretty damn rich right now!
It would be fun to include it, and license it as free to use for anyone who gave a dollar to Unicef or something.
And then, the next time this shit happens, the patent defenders would all go “How would these children get their basic needs met if it weren't for patents? Why do you hate children?”
It would be glorious.
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#178Some of these seem really questionable at first glance (note that I haven't read the entire patents yet) > United States Patent No. 6,415,280 "Identifying and Requesting Data in Network Using Identifiers Which Are Based On Contents of Data." This sounds alot like hashing the contents of a file to get and identifier for it. If anything it sounds like maybe Git itself violates this, but I thought that Git hashed the di…
> This sounds alot like hashing the contents of a file to get and identifier for it Oops... I think the image asset deduplication method I used at the portal I worked for infringes on that. It's a Brazilian company, so, good luck for them. Yep... They still use it: http://i0.ig.com/bancodeimagens/02/9a/e2/029ae2zxd9u8jflt2le...
Does it know from which of a pool of servers should it get the data, based on that identifier? If not, it doesn't violate the patent.
Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#179Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without patents, how is a pharma company expected to pay the enormous cost of research, development, and FDA approval of new drugs? How about taxes? Drugs that are useful for millions of people can be subsidized --internationally even. It will make the system even less commercialized (i.e prone to go for quick bucks and BS drugs instead of proper medicine). Most of the more expensive drugs are of marginal utility a…
You are essentially arguing for a central planning approach, and we have ample evidence from the 20th century that this does not produce better outcomes than a market-based approach.
>You are essentially arguing for a central planning approach, and we have ample evidence from the 20th century that this does not produce better outcomes than a market-based approach.
What "ample evidence"? The USSR? For one, they had a mighty fine space program.
Second, one example of central planning, that also carried other kinds of rubbish with it (cutthroat politics at the top level, being enforced on a backwards, non adequately industrialized country, dogmatic ideology, and having to fight a foreign superpower) does not "ample evidence" constitute.
Central planning != 20th century communism. We have much better examples of central planning, successful ones, in the western world.