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Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

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Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#51

Post by AnthonyMouse »

alphapapa wrote: post #48
cma wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. They can be. Say there are 1000 equal shareholders in a company, and they make up .01% of society. If they do $10,000,000 in damage to society they discount that by .01%, and just need to earn $1,000 as a company, one dollar each, in exchange in order for…

That requires seeing everything as a matter of money. Not everything in life can be measured in dollars and cents. We are all poorer--as a society--when some people profit at others' suffering. You are demonstrating precisely the problem mentality that I am pointing out. Please wake up.

> That requires seeing everything as a matter of money. Not everything in life can be measured in dollars and cents.

What do you propose to measure it in then? There are situations where you can save X number of lives by doing Y hours of labor, and there are cases where Y is so much larger than X that you have to say no, we aren't going to do that. How do you propose to make that kind of decision without using some comparable measure of value?

Nobody can claim that the current situation is optimal. It's kind of terrible. But it isn't because we measure things using money.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#52

Post by lotsofmangos »

cma wrote: post #47
alphapapa wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously "we" have not agreed that that is the case. > Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can. And that attitude is why we can't have nice things. That would be what's known as "enabling." How about, "It's unreasonable to expect a beer company to do anything other than sell as much alcohol as they can, however they can, to whomever they can.…

>And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. They can be. Say there are 1000 equal shareholders in a company, and they make up .01% of society. If they do $10,000,000 in damage to society they discount that by .01%, and just need to earn $1,000 as a company, one dollar each, in exchange in order for…

I find A&E makes a good example for this.

For A&E to work well needs A&E departments located within easy reach of an incident and to be staffed by people who are kept in practice and will operate immediately if required, instead of doing financial admin first.

Now this list of factors means you can always make money by shutting down A&E departments as they cannot do anything but operate at a loss.

However no matter how much money you make by doing so, you are increasing your own accidental mortality risk.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#53

Post by nileshtrivedi »

cguess wrote: post #46
jheriko wrote: post #44

the USPTO is a laughing stock, they should consider some serious reform quickly or just being completely disbanded. they serve no valuable purpose other than to retard the whole of society for the future as far as i can tell...

The main reason it exists is to provide incentive for people to actually create things and to spend the money on R&D with a hope there will be a return. If I spend three years and $500,000 developing a new building material, I should be able to be protected from an employee of mine quitting and starting a new company doing the same thing from techniques he learned using my invention (for a certain period of time). So…

Patents are an incentive to disclose the techniques behind inventions. Plenty of incentives already exist to create things and invest in R&D.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#54

Post by klipt »

andrewrice wrote: post #20
frandroid wrote: post #3

> EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer, who also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents Best chair name ever.

Mark Cuban funded the title with a $250,000 donation in 2012. "The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful," said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer. That's bad for consumers and bad for business. It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help. So that's why part of my donation funds a new…

So if you donate enough money you can name the chair anything you want?

This raises so many opportunities!

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#55

Post by tjl »

cguess wrote: post #46
jheriko wrote: post #44

the USPTO is a laughing stock, they should consider some serious reform quickly or just being completely disbanded. they serve no valuable purpose other than to retard the whole of society for the future as far as i can tell...

The main reason it exists is to provide incentive for people to actually create things and to spend the money on R&D with a hope there will be a return. If I spend three years and $500,000 developing a new building material, I should be able to be protected from an employee of mine quitting and starting a new company doing the same thing from techniques he learned using my invention (for a certain period of time). So…

My thought has been that they need to go back to requiring a physical implementation. So, if you devise a hardware product that includes software, the whole thing can be patented, but not the specific algorithms. This eliminates all the business process patents and basically software patents as well.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#56

Post by cdcarter »

klipt wrote: post #54
andrewrice wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Cuban funded the title with a $250,000 donation in 2012. "The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful," said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer. That's bad for consumers and bad for business. It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help. So that's why part of my donation funds a new…

So if you donate enough money you can name the chair anything you want? This raises so many opportunities!

Just wait until you discover endowed professorships.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#58

Post by chrisbennet »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #52
cma wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. They can be. Say there are 1000 equal shareholders in a company, and they make up .01% of society. If they do $10,000,000 in damage to society they discount that by .01%, and just need to earn $1,000 as a company, one dollar each, in exchange in order for…

I find A&E makes a good example for this. For A&E to work well needs A&E departments located within easy reach of an incident and to be staffed by people who are kept in practice and will operate immediately if required, instead of doing financial admin first. Now this list of factors means you can always make money by shutting down A&E departments as they cannot do anything but operate at a loss. However no matter h…

What does "A&E" stand for? Edit: Found it - it is The UK equivalent of what Americans call a hospital Emergency Room or just "Emergency".

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#59

Post by spacemanmatt »

angersock wrote: post #49
alphapapa wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously "we" have not agreed that that is the case. > Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can. And that attitude is why we can't have nice things. That would be what's known as "enabling." How about, "It's unreasonable to expect a beer company to do anything other than sell as much alcohol as they can, however they can, to whomever they can.…

And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live. Unless the destruction occurs outside of the realm (spatial or temporal) of the shareholders, in which case the destruction can rightfully be modeled as an externality and ignored. I don't know where this idea that "companies are required or expected to mak…

Thanks for the informed response. Someone has to. It's like no one understands fiduciary obligations.

Re: Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters

#60

Post by spacemanmatt »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #42
leereeves wrote: post #10

> Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system.

> It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system. I agree with you on one hand but on the other is it impossible for a person to reform and later want a patent to protect their new creation? I'd just like to see the whole system overhauled or maybe even removed in some ways.

I would be ok with keeping the patent system only if it becomes far more difficult to gain a monopoly on an invention. The courts+USPTO allowed an era of serious abuse via patents on abstract inventions that we won't recover from quickly.
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