Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github • Hacker News Board

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#91

Post by defen » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #80

defen wrote: post #58

I can't view the link because it's expired, so I'll just post my rant here. The entire point of patents, as delineated in the U.S. Constitution, is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." So patents are a means , of securing an end , which is "the progress of science and useful arts".…

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.

Pharmaceuticals definitely seem to be an exception, since the time + cost of developing a drug (years + billions of dollars) is so staggeringly large compared to the cost of manufacturing / copying. So maybe there needs to be a special type of patent that only applies to drugs and treatments for medical conditions.

Going up one level though - how much has society truly benefitted from the billions (trillions?) of dollars that have been spent on developing new drugs? This is admittedly a field I know very little about, but to what extent are improvements in quality of life / life expectancy in the U.S. in the past 40 years due to new drugs, vs better diet, exercise, reductions in smoking, better emergency medicine, occupational safety regulations, safer cars, etc?

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#92

Post by bloodredsun » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #44

mikey_p wrote: post #18

Some 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…

Git doesn't violate this in any way. Read the claims. They're talking about distributing data throughout a network of servers, using an hash as a key to know from which servers to request the data. It's more similar to database sharding.

So Memcached then...

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#93

Post by betterth » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

diminish wrote: post #83

maratd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice sentiment. I share it. It's also a waste of breath. > trolls, oligopolies and lawyers Every member of that group is well funded, highly connected, and very aggressive. They are ready to devote untold resources to crush your sentiment and should that fail, to redirect your reform efforts into a more palatable outcome. Every piece of legislation is a compromise between competing interests and their competing inter…

Apple -a beloved public fetish - and its patent wins have paved the way for the attack of the patent empires and rogue states, in broader public opinion. Forget abolishing patents, I would expect more litigations and monetization attempts from software patent holders and a more proprietary, closed world for a decade or so; till the heritage of the "new Apple" erodes. ++@betterth Because Apple is more positively perce…

BS. Patent trolls have been around for a very long time, and companies like IBM represent the lionshare of patent applications.

Apple themselves files one of the lowest numbers of offensive patent lawsuits -- it's just a confirmation bias mixed with the massive publicity that Apple gets.

Just because you hear about EVERY one of Apple's lawsuits doesn't mean that Apple is "paving the way"!

I hate the knee-jerk "blame Apple" nonsense that is so pervasive! What is Apple doing that is so groundbreaking to patents?

I argue that the weaponization of patents, something APPLE TAKES NO PART IN, is a far worse problem. Google buying up Motorola for their patent portfolio and loaning them out to partners like dirty nukes... and APPLE is the leader of patent nonsense?

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#94

Post by patmcguire » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #32

dfc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt jurisdiction was a deciding factor in who to sue. But I hated Civil Procedure so I could be wrong...

Jurisdiction is a huge factor when filing suits. IP lawyers do their best to move cases into Tyler, TX (or other backwoods cities) where the judges don't understand technology whatsoever. A popular tactic is to shake down porn companies for money using nuisance patent suits.

I've head from lawyers that East Texas became the place to patent lawsuits mostly because the War on Drugs. It was much easier to get the courts' time for civil trials or motions before they were overloaded with constant criminal prosecution. East Texas happened to have a lower load at the beginning or some townships spotted an opportunity to bring in some more business by making themselves attractive to litigators. Either way, the reasoning things are filed in East Texas has more to do with it being the Silicon Valley of patent trolling than any kind of venue shopping.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#95

Post by CrankyBear » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

skymt wrote: post #12

The 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

Yet more proof, as if were needed, that software patents are BS.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#96

Post by agilord » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

skymt wrote: post #12

The 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

"All your data processing codes are belong to us." Unfortunately, this is not as funny as it should be.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#97

Post by rorrr » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:27 PM UTC

skymt wrote: post #12

The 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.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#98

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

mikey_p wrote: post #18

Some 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...

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#99

Post by ktizo » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #80

defen wrote: post #58

I can't view the link because it's expired, so I'll just post my rant here. The entire point of patents, as delineated in the U.S. Constitution, is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." So patents are a means , of securing an end , which is "the progress of science and useful arts".…

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?

Well the obvious answer would be through some form of tax based scheme that then plows the money into research primarily based on clinical need, which funnily enough is how a hell of a lot of the drugs that are actually useful get developed currently. But expanding these kind of solutions is very unpopular in the states from what I gather, apart from in the case of weaponry, so how about some form of kickstarter for medical research? People throw loads of money at products that don't and may never exist on there, so you should be able to get tonnes of cash by just repeating the word "cancer" a lot.

[edit] I went off and found some figures on this:

"In 1999 the National Cancer Policy Board conducted a survey of federal and nonfederal sources of cancer research funding [ 11]. The board found, for the fiscal year 1996/1997, that the total amount spent on cancer research funding was US$5.165 billion. The three major contributors were (1) federal funding, US$3.060 billion (almost entirely from National Cancer Institute); (2) industry funding, US$1.6 billion; and (3) funding by nonprofit organisations (e.g., Howard Hughes Medical Institute, American Cancer Society, Komen Foundation), US$305 million."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1513045/

So, for cancer at least, government and charity funding combined, dwarfs the amount spent by the pharmaceutical industry on research in the US.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#100

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

betterth wrote: post #93

diminish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple -a beloved public fetish - and its patent wins have paved the way for the attack of the patent empires and rogue states, in broader public opinion. Forget abolishing patents, I would expect more litigations and monetization attempts from software patent holders and a more proprietary, closed world for a decade or so; till the heritage of the "new Apple" erodes. ++@betterth Because Apple is more positively perce…

BS. Patent trolls have been around for a very long time, and companies like IBM represent the lionshare of patent applications. Apple themselves files one of the lowest numbers of offensive patent lawsuits -- it's just a confirmation bias mixed with the massive publicity that Apple gets. Just because you hear about EVERY one of Apple's lawsuits doesn't mean that Apple is "paving the way"! I hate the knee-jerk "blame…

I hate the knee-jerk "blame Apple" nonsense that is so pervasive! What is Apple doing that is so groundbreaking to patents?

You know, I've looked all through the Constitution, and while there's some stuff about promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, I don't see anything about starting thermonuclear wars against competitors. Can you help me out?