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MS Gets 2 New Patents |
![](http://www.groklaw.net/images/speck.gif) |
Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:11 AM EST
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Here's a charming start to the day, an article on Microsoft getting two new patents, one on a compiler and the other on an "improved" system and method for editing software. Innovation marches on. Obviously, if you are a programmer, you probably don't want to be reading patents, but for the rest of us, the compiler patent, U.S. Patent number 6,836,883, titled "Method and system for compiling multiple languages", is here and the editing patent, US Patent 6,836,884 titled "Method and system for editing software programs" is here. The first is described as a method or "process involving the parsing and analyzing of more than one source language to produce a common language file that may then be read by the same or another front end system." Well. The world is crying out for a compiler that can do that. The patent cites the Free Software Foundation's GCC in the prior art section. I'll say.
It also references: Gosling, J. et al, "The Java Language Environment. A White Paper", Sun Microsystems Computer Company, Oct. 1, 1995, pp. 1, 4-85, XP 002042922.
The second patent appears to be a debugger/editor, which permits line-by-line "execution capabilities", whereby you can stop and edit and then continue where execution left off, and it provides "support for common language runtime environments". The part that caught my eye in the compiler patent is this language: "Although the invention has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological steps, it is to be understood that the invention defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or steps described. As an example, other source languages may be included in the front end portion in combination with the first source and the common languages. Therefore, the specific features and steps are disclosed as preferred forms of implementing the claimed invention." Way cool. We get to guess at all it can do. A patent on a secret. They used the same language in their patent application on .NET. (Mono Project's reaction.) Next they can apply for a patent on their patent, "a method or process of keeping the threat of patent infringement lawsuits against GNU/Linux alive, whereby one obtains patents that could be easily debunked by multitudinous prior art if all the facts were placed on the table, but by means of partial disclosure of what the method or process does, you can hint that there is just enough there to require a court to debunk your claims, all of which costs money, which, happily, the FOSS community doesn't have. This methodology creates anxiety in CEOs about using GPL software, without actually having to sue anyone, thus minimizing costs." The article says that Microsoft was "unable to comment" on the patents. After all, I thought as I read that sentence, they might get deposed one day. Nothing more annoying than having to explain the why of a thing in a hostile deposition. They were happy to tell the journalist, however, why they need to get patents: "'The protection and licensing of intellectual property allows companies and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustaining business and encouraging future rounds of research and investment in the IT industry,' the Microsoft spokesperson explained to internetnews.com." Is that English? I recognize English words, but what does it mean? Let me parse that sentence out the way my beloved granny taught me as a child. Let's see. They need patents so they can get money from all of us to fund all the innovating they are doing. Oh. Patents ensure the freedom to innovate. Wait. Wasn't that the reason for integrating the browser into the operating system? And Windows Media Player? Freedom to innovate? I'm thinking they need to come up with a better excu^H^H^H^H reason. That one didn't play too well. They lost two antitrust lawsuits with that tagline. Besides, "you have to cross our palm with silver or we won't innovate" sounds crass, especially coming from such wealthy company. So, how about it? I bet you can come up with a better quotation than that one. If you were Microsoft on truth serum, how would you explain their need for these patents? Here's my entry: "We need these patents so we can kill off Free and Open Source software." No? Too plain-spoken? Too direct? OK, let's see. I'll put it in my own editing/debugging tool, my brain, and after execution and some stop and go, out comes: "The protection and licensing of intellectual property allows Microsoft to get buckets of dough to sustain our bully business without having to actually innovate, because it permits us, by cutting off the oxygen supply of our competition, to overprice our software, because you'll have no other practical choice but to buy and use our software, and all that money you give us will pay us for continued, ahem, research and investment and oppression in the IT industry. Patents enable us to kill off the babies in the innovative software industry, so to speak, particularly pesky Free and Open Source competition, which is threatening our monopoly business model (think Firefox). We'd like to remain still the one and only overbearing monopoly player, the only real game in town, thanks to the wonderful USPTO's patent system. We'll license our patented software under 'reasonable' terms that block all GPL software because of incompatible language, and presto! They are cut out of the loop, and money will flow in to us like a tsunami from all you suckers who didn't pay attention to Groklaw's early warning system that notified you that we'd use software patents to destroy free and open source software, ha ha ha ha ha. " Perhaps you can tell that I've been reading transcripts of the US v. Microsoft antitrust trial for a a week? Of course, my debugging/editing tool is old and I neglected to file a patent on it, so it could be missing something innovative here. If so, I'm sure you will let me know. It's so old-fashioned, it could have sworn there was invalidating prior art all over the place. Do the examiners at the USPTO need a crash computer course? I'm sure we have volunteers galore willing to give them a helping hand. Of course, to solve a problem, you need to recognize you have one. In an interview, the head of the USPTO says he thinks things are going along swimmingly there. The problem is, in his view, critics aren't experts in the law, and so they imagine problems that don't exist: "The bottom line is there is a lot of misunderstandings about patents and that may lead to some of this rhetoric, but the bottom line is it's a pretty specialized area of the law and it takes experts to understand the patentability -- what the process is, how we determine whether to issue a patent or not, how the prior art defines the scope of coverage that an applicant is entitled to, and so on and so forth."And what you get is a lot of people that look at the title of the invention or some abstract or whatever and just come to these conclusions with respect to, 'how could the USPTO issue a patent' on such and such? But they haven't actually looked at the legal scope of coverage; they're more or less looking at a broad concept that's described in the patent as opposed to the claims that define the legal scope of the coverage." Really? With all due respect, may I point out that Microsoft's patent on the FAT file system ended up being rejected, thanks to PubPat.org's requesting a reexamination procedure and presenting prior art? There are patent lawyers who see a problem with patents being issued that are not legitimate. And they do know how to read a patent claim and figure out the legal scope of coverage. I asked Dan Ravicher of Pubpat.org if he would care to comment on the new patents, and he said this: "These two patents specifically have effective filing dates in 2000 and 2001, respectively. So, anything that was publicly available a year before those dates would be prior art to them." A master of economical speech.
The FOSS community would appreciate it very much if the USPTO didn't issue patents so broadly that it is forced to go the trouble and expense of finding prior art after a patent is issued, although we will certainly be willing to continue to do so, if needed. But is there no way we could set up a process to help you find prior art *before* the invalid patent issues? Wouldn't that be more efficient? We're happy to give you a helping hand, if only you'd let us. Speaking of patents, I wondered how it is that software patents are issued in Europe when supposedly patents on software are not permitted. I have found the answer, and it goes like this: Europe already has uniform rules about what is patentable and what not.
They are laid down in the European Patent Convention of 1973. In Article
52, the Convention states that mathematical methods, intellectual
methods, business methods, computer programs, presentation of
information etc are not inventions in the sense of patent law. There is
a systematic reason for that: in the legal tradition patents have been
for concrete applications of natural science (technical inventions),
whereas patents on software cover abstract ideas. When patents are
applied to software, the result is such that instead of patenting a
specific mousetrap, you patent any "means of trapping mammals" (or, for
an actual example, any means of trapping data in an emulated environment).
In 1986 the European Patent Office (EPO) started granting patents that
were directed to computer programs but presented in the guise of process
claims, typically phrased as follows:
1. process for [using general-purpose computing equipment],
characterised by ...
The patents granted on this basis were considered as hypothetical,
because the program as such, when distributed on a disk or via the
Internet, did not constitute a process and was not an invention. To
resolve this ambiguity, the European Patent Office took the final step
toward patentability of pure software in 1998 by authorising program
claims, i.e. claims of the following form:
2. computer program, characterised by that [with its help a process
according to claim 1 can be executed].
Hmmm... "computer program characterised by ..." Microsoft's two new patents, with a minor tweak, would seem to qualify, no? They both begin, "a method or process for". Call them instead "a computer program characterised by", and they are off and running. Of course, they are too clever to apply now in Europe. It might tip off everybody there as to the big picture. First they get software patents permitted, and *then* they apply for patents on a compiler and a debugger/editor. EU? Are you paying attention? I hope so. Do you want GNU/Linux to be available to you or not? If you do, please read these patents, think about your backdoor patent arrangement and the whole software patents question, and connect the dots, before it is too late. We who love GNU/Linux software are counting on you.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:37 AM EST |
...for ease of PJ's finding them [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: OldPro on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:40 AM EST |
Burroughs medium systems (b4x00) Cobol 68 compiler allowed command ENTER
SYMBOLIC, followed by Assembler language code, terminated by END SYMBOLIC.
Resulting compile produced common object code form COBOL language statements and
Assembler (SYMBOLIC) language statements which could be loaded by the Linker and
used to produce executable code.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:01 AM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:02 AM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Chris Lingard on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:06 AM EST
- is the USPTO still relevant due to it's inability to function effectively? - Authored by: feldegast on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:19 AM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:29 AM EST
- Lots of prior art? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:09 AM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: boban on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:32 AM EST
- Borland, and even before? - Authored by: tiger99 on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:15 PM EST
- NELIAC - Authored by: laitcg on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:21 PM EST
- THIS IS NOT RELEVANT - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:26 PM EST
- RELEVANT CLAIMS - Authored by: cbc on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:00 PM EST
- Nope - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 08:47 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:46 PM EST
- That's better... - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 02:45 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:51 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: bb5ch39t on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 02:22 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 03:46 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 04:06 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1965 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 04:41 PM EST
- Compiling two languages into one executable, circa 1975 - Authored by: Tyro on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:15 PM EST
- Don't foget the P-code system - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 06 2005 @ 01:09 AM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:44 AM EST |
cause sometimes the coolest things start out OT
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- OT "Linux and Open Source: The 2005 Generation" - Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:06 AM EST
- Steroids - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:38 AM EST
- Steroids - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:47 PM EST
- OT What did I say about consumer electronics? - Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:45 AM EST
- Comparing EULA to GPL - Authored by: NickDeGraeve on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:31 AM EST
- The Penguin in Peril: SCO's Legal Threat to Linux - Authored by: rdc3 on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:01 PM EST
- Humorix: The Year In Preview 2005 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:08 PM EST
- E-Rasing Baystar - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:15 PM EST
- Thanks - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 04:36 PM EST
- E-Rasing Baystar - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:24 PM EST
- Question about copyrights - Authored by: dlramsey on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:34 PM EST
- [OT] Sanford Wallace is at it again - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 04:09 PM EST
- OT ZDnet on M$ involvement with the SCOG. - Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:32 PM EST
- Long Interview: Richard Stallman - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:58 PM EST
- OT Business Week names Linus as one of The Best Managers of 2004 - Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 07:13 PM EST
- OT - Charter (an ISP) vs. RIAA Appeal Issued - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 08:52 PM EST
- Judge blocks Microsoft from banking Utah software piracy winnings - Authored by: sappha58 on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:28 PM EST
- The ruling - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 07:09 AM EST
- Brazil releases Freedows - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 07:15 AM EST
- Excellent! - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 03:54 AM EST
- OT - Article on Xbox patent - Authored by: Juggler on Friday, January 07 2005 @ 04:35 PM EST
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Authored by: dyfet on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:45 AM EST |
The EPO has been granting what are in effect pure software patents contrary
to
stated European law for a considerable time now. Those patents are
issued to
date by the EPO, and I recall there is now a backlog of 20,000 such
patents
issued, are currently unenforcable. Some who are more cynical might
even say
the EPO
was acting in a knowningly fraudulent manner. The purpose of the EU
council
directive on patents seems to be to "harmonize" the existing EU legal
code in
such a way that those already issued EPO patents, and other forms of
software patenting would suddenly become legally enforceable in Europe.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- On the EPO - Authored by: MathFox on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:04 AM EST
- On the EPO - Authored by: Paul Shirley on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:07 AM EST
- On the EPO - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:40 PM EST
- On the EPO - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 07 2005 @ 03:53 AM EST
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Authored by: lifewish on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:50 AM EST |
"We need these patents so we can kill off Free and Open Source
software."
Pah! Shame on you for suggesting such a thing. They're merely selectively
leveraging existing assets and contextual infrastructure to innovate dated
business paradigms, thus proactively maximising consumer value and shareholder
ROI.
By which I mean that they're exploiting a buggy patent system to kill off FOSS
software. Their customers and shareholders may reap some benefit; no-one else
will.
On second thoughts, that was too legible. I'll go read some sales literature and
try again later.
---
To err is human but, to really screw up, you need a computer.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:51 AM EST |
"The bottom line is there is a lot of misunderstandings about
patents and that may lead to some of this rhetoric, but the bottom line is it's
a pretty specialized area of the law and it takes experts to understand the
patentability -- what the process is, how we determine whether to issue a patent
or not, how the prior art defines the scope of coverage that an applicant is
entitled to, and so on and so forth.
"And what you get is a lot of
people that look at the title of the invention or some abstract or whatever and
just come to these conclusions with respect to, 'how could the USPTO issue a
patent' on such and such? But they haven't actually looked at the legal scope of
coverage; they're more or less looking at a broad concept that's described in
the patent as opposed to the claims that define the legal scope of the
coverage."
That's right. The problem isn't with the patent
system, it's just that we're all stupid. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: MathFox on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:55 AM EST |
The Microsoft patents contain some claim language like:
A computer
readable medium having stored thereon a data structure
...
and
A computer-readable medium comprising
computer-executable instructions ...
which, could even prohibit
discussion of the topic matter of these patents via a computer network. Patents
have strayed a long way from publicly disclosing inventions...--- When
people start to comment on the form of the message, it is a sign that they have
problems to accept the truth of the message.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:56 AM EST |
I entered the computer industry in 1980 at (long forgotten) Wang Labs. We had a
debugger on our mini-computers that could handle all of our languages and our
assembler at the same time and do single stepping by high-level language
statement. Of course, ALL of our competitors (primarily DEC, DG, Prime) had
debuggers with similar capabilities.
Twenty five years later this is patentable?
Absolutely amazing![ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:56 AM EST |
There are many examples of this. In fact, compiling to an intermediate,
internal representation of the source langauge is common compiler theory.
They're patenting an abstract syntax tree (AST?) That is why compilers have
what they call "front ends" and "back ends". The front end reads the source
langauge code, and converts it into an intermediate format, which contains the
same meaning as the original program, but in a generic representation that the
back end knows how to traverse. The back-end is given this intermediate
representation, and is used to generate the output of the compiler. The beauty
is you can have multiple front ends utilizing the same optimizer and
code-generating back end, or you can have one front-end and multiple back-ends
for cross-compiling (producing programs that run on different platforms.) And
the power of GCC is that you can have multiple front ends mixed with multiple
back ends, for many combinations of languages on different platforms. You can
even build a windows executable on linux.
Borland has done nearly the same
thing with their C++ and Delphi compilers. They use the same front end to parse
the source language, but use the identical back-end to produce the actual
executable programs. Does this qualify as prior art? ( link )
There are many, many code generators that take a custom or niche language
and translate it into a common language like C. You then take the C output, run
it through a C compiler, and have your executable. In that regard, you are
using the C compiler as a back-end, and your different translators as your front
end. Heck, in college I built one of these in my compiler theory class in a
single semester.
Currently, there is work being done on Perl, Python, and
Ruby, to create a single representation for byte-compiled output of all three
langauges, called parrot. In theory, this means that these scripting langauges
could inter-operate, and they become just different ways to say the same
thing... using your favorite language they can all compile to the same
bytecode(s). ( Link
)
Same with Java. There are other languages that can be compiled into
Java compatible bytecodes, that are fully capable of operating directly with
java classes.
Chris [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:19 AM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:34 AM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:44 AM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:42 AM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:02 PM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:12 PM EST
- JPI (later Clarion) 1990 - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:03 PM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:05 PM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:19 PM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:48 PM EST
- Prior Art - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 02:02 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 09:59 AM EST |
I still think that patent law should include compensation by the patent holder
for challenges to the patent should the patent be struck down in court. I say
let patent hunters be let loose on the pile of worthless patents that have been
issued.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:00 AM EST |
that ran under TSO on IBM MVS (mainframe) systems in the early 1970s, re U.S.
Patent number 6,836,883.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:02 AM EST |
MS: The protection and licensing of intellectual property allows
companies
and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustaining
business and
encouraging future rounds of research and investment in
the IT
industry.
...
PJ: Oh. Patents ensure the freedom to innovate.
Wait.
I'd have expected better of you, PJ. Far more accurate to
paraphrase it
as "Patents ensure the funding to innovate" -- if less
rhetorically effective.
It is, of course, the prospect of a return
on investment that
patent law should provide, that innovation may be
appropriately
rewarded. Alas, the degree of innovation of IP varies. If the
Microsoft
quote was modified to use the phrase "innovative intellectual
property," I'd be in enthusiastic agreement. However, far
too many patents are
awarded these days with far too little innovation
behind them, leading to
market rewarding with returns on investment
in patents, not on investment in
innovation.
At this point, the invisible hand of economics needs a thwack on
the wrist. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Tsk, tsk.... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 06 2005 @ 08:29 AM EST
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Authored by: gtall on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:18 AM EST |
The second patent appears to be a debugger/editor, which permits line-by-line
"execution capabilities", whereby you can stop and edit and then continue where
execution left off, and it provides "support for common language runtime
environments".
I once used a beautiful object oriented data
flow language that had a debugger/editor that did just this, it was called
Prograph. I doubt it exists anymore but I still hope for it. It was made by
Pictorus, they got burned in up in the .com inflation.
Gerry[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jkw on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:18 AM EST |
P-code, anyone? I had FORTRAN and Pascal on an Apple IIe back
in 1986 or so.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:19 AM EST |
"'The protection and licensing of intellectual property allows companies
and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustaining business and
encouraging future rounds of research and investment in the IT industry,' the
Microsoft spokesperson explained to internetnews.com."
Please read as:
We need patents so we can kill our competition and bleed money out of you so we
can get more patents so we can kill our competition and bleed more money out of
you so we can get more patents so we can...
Paul C.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:22 AM EST |
Whenever I hear about another rediculous set of patents I always remember Don
Lancasters advicea "That patenting a million dollar Idea dosn't pay because
you cant afford to enforce it". Do We really need another example of how
badly screwed up the patent system is ?
The big question is what will it take to get what amounts to one more shakedown
racket reformed.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:22 AM EST |
Doesn't those patents remind you of the UCSD P-System and UCSD Pascal that was
available for microcomputers back in the 70's and 80's. Its purpose was to
translate different languages in to psuedo-code that was then compiled or
interpreted, can't remember which.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:24 AM EST |
Anyone looking for compilers accepting more than one language and generating a
common format can go back to the 70's and UCSD Pascal, which later
accepted FORTRAN and Ada. They generated P-code which was either
interpreted, compiled, or executed directly by a Motorola 68000 with hacked
microcode. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: ExcludedMiddle on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:37 AM EST |
So I suppose that this only becomes an issue if they decide to sue GNU for
making prior art. Man, I hate when people infringe my patents by making prior
art!
If you are a programmer, like I am, the best legal advice that I've heard is
that you should NOT read them. I just love that. Doing nothing about this is
tough, but I'll try to manage.
As a strategy, these are reasonable infantry in MS's fight against FOSS, but
hardly a threat singly. It's a waste of their time to go after particular little
projects that might use this: they may not have money, but they also aren't
influential enough. And the major projects not only have money, they are so
important to the computer communities that major companies would shell out to
help with the legal defense. For example, let's say that MS sued GNU for GCC.
That is the foundation of the entire GNU/Linux. Without it, it would not be able
to be compiled. Assuming that GNU didn't even have money or legal defenses
(which of course they do), the donations for their legal defense would be
staggering. And the amount of free researchers to find prior art and for legal
help, grok-style, would be even more staggering.
The patents that I worry more about are the ones that protect interoperability.
For example, patents on the MS file system access that could kill SAMBA. And as
our recent research has been showing, you can't directly use patents to do that,
especially if you are a monopoly, so luckily, it's not a given that these will
be effective.
I would suggest that the best thing to do about these particular patents is not
to directly challenge these, but to instead collect prior art for it now, in
case this does come up in court. Perhaps teaming up with an organization like
PubPat so that in the future, if this comes up, there's a ready made defense.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:44 AM EST |
So what's the next step?
How do we make the USPTO aware of the fact that they've made a couple of fairly
serious mistakes here?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Eeyore on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:44 AM EST |
I remember using P-Code (which was a pre-compiler plus an intrepreter initally)
on a TI 994A back in the late 70's. If I remember correctly it was PRIMARILY
Pascal but there were other front ends (BASIC and Fortran I think - and maybe
others). Later it seems like I remember seeing software that would convert the
output from the pre-compiler to a native executable. It SURE sounds
similar....
Wikipedia
article with links
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:48 AM EST |
I was wondering if someone could help me understand some of the language in
this patent. I'm not too knowledge in the areas of compilers, though I've
written plenty of code.
For example:
What is claimed
is:
1. A front end compiler system for generating code to be used by an
execution environment, said front end system comprising:
a metadata
module that compiles information to produce metadata information;
a code
module that compiles information to produces executable instructions;
and
wherein the metadata information and executable instructions are the
result of compiling a source file in a first language and the front end compiler
consumes metadata information produced by a different front end compiler as a
result of compiling a source file in a second language.
That first
part I take to mean it takes some code and compiles it an executable file, not
necessarily for that system, but for some system. Fine.
When the patent
mentiones a metadata module and a code module, I start getting lost. A code
module sounds like the source code, but what is this metadata
information?
The next part baffles me a little. There are two compilers
here, one for the metadata information and another for the source. The source
compiler feeds the information to the metadata compiler. Is this akin to
creating object code and linking objects? To nitpick, I think consume is a poor
choice in words unless they are implying the metadata compiler destroys the data
being feed to it from the source compiler. Granted it could be getting a stream
of data but couldn't that be writing a little more clearly?
What I need
is the patent language on one side and some sort of laymans speak on the other.
Or am I the only one having trouble comprehending the patent?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:52 AM EST |
It was a long time ago but I remember writing CBasic source then compiling it to
a .hex file. This could then be linked to other .hex files, produced from OTHER
languages (assembler and Fortran spring to mind) to produce an executable file.
It wasn't exactly intuitive (something about the symbol tables needing to be
modified) but it worked.
We're talking early 1980's here, on CP/M machines. Prior art anybody?
davcefai, away from my password.
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Authored by: jim Reiter on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:57 AM EST |
It looks like the new M$# strategy is to recreate the
monoply behind a wall of patents.
It would seem that the appropriate counter strategy would
be to avoid M$# "innovation" at all cost. Using M$#
"innovation" puts you under M$# control and subject to M$#
"over pricing".
This should start with development tools.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: fredex on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:02 AM EST |
Back in the late 1970s I worked for a small startup that used its own
proprietary programming language (QPL). QPL was compiled to a byte-code language
named QTL. QTL was (originally) interpreted by a module in the (proprietary)
operating system (which was written in assembler for the machine in use). Later
on, various levels of a hardware implementation of the QTL interpreter were
created, giving enormous performance boosts.
Anyway,... though this was only a single source language, it probably wouldn't
have been an enormous deal to target some other (modest) language to the same
QTL back end.
This company began doing this in '75 or '76 and sold hundreds of systems
throughout the US and Canada up into the early-to-mid '80s.
The designer of the language had done the same sort of things before at other
companies, so this was not a new concept even then.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Bas Burger on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:17 AM EST |
Translations of the outspoken opinion from the head of the USPTO.
This is what I read and think is really ment but not said because of legal
issues.
"The bottom line is there is a lot of misunderstandings about patents and
that may lead to some of this rhetoric, but the bottom line is it's a pretty
specialized area of the law and it takes experts to understand the patentability
-- what the process is, how we determine whether to issue a patent or not, how
the prior art defines the scope of coverage that an applicant is entitled to,
and so on and so forth.
Translation: "Since you are not a Expert in our eyes and never will be
because we say so, Thus SHUT UP!!!"
"And what you get is a lot of people that look at the title of the
invention or some abstract or whatever and just come to these conclusions with
respect to, 'how could the USPTO issue a patent' on such and such? But they
haven't actually looked at the legal scope of coverage; they're more or less
looking at a broad concept that's described in the patent as opposed to the
claims that define the legal scope of the coverage."
Translation:"People that stand in the way of us making large sums of money
by selling air castles should SHUT UP and BEAT IT, otherwise we will give them
trouble"
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:17 AM EST |
I apologize for not reading all the posts before posting this. A quick search
did not seem to turn up any hard dates. I remember a book Anatomy of a
Compiler. Would have to dig through boxes to find my copy, but I enjoyed the
book when I read it. I have not read the patents, I am a programmer. It seems
to me, and I may be mistaken, that the author refered to P Code. A pseudo
machine code, that a compiler could compile to. A search of the web brought up
the following results:
The first site I found referenced a copyright date of 1967. The copy at Western
Michigan University has a copyright date of 1974. Perhaps if John A.N. Lee by
chance reads this site, he might be able to shed some light on what in MS's
patent is not prior art.
The anatomy of a compiler
By:
John A N Lee
Type:
English : Book : Non-fiction
Publisher:
New York, Reinhold Pub. Corp. [1967]
Subjects:
Compilers (Computer programs)
Programmation (Informatique)
Compilation (Ordinateurs)
Find Related:
Title/Author Search
The anatomy of a compiler [by] John A. N. Lee.
Main Author:
Lee, John A. N.
Title:
The anatomy of a compiler [by] John A. N. Lee.
Subject(s):
Compiling (Electronic computers)
Publisher:
New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. [1974]
Description:
Book
The anatomy of a compiler [by] John A. N. Lee.
Author:
Lee, John A. N.
Title:
The anatomy of a compiler [by] John A. N. Lee.
Edition:
2d ed.
Publisher:
Author: Lee, John A. N.
Title: Computer semantics; studies of algorithms, processors, and
languages [by] John A. N. Lee.
Primary Material: Book
Subject(s): Electronic digital computers--Programming.
Algorithms.
Programming languages (Electronic computers)--Semantics.
Publisher: New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold [1972]
Description: xvi, 397 p. illus. 24 cm.
Series: Computer science series
Notes: Bibliography: p. 386-387.
Call Number: QA76.6 .L38
Location: Waldo Library, General Stacks
================================================================================
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Institution Name
Institution Address
Institution Phone Number
Institution E-mail Address
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:26 AM EST |
The bottom line is there is a lot of misunderstandings about
patents and that may lead to some of this rhetoric, but the bottom line is it's
a pretty specialized area of the law and it takes experts to understand the
patentability -- what the process is, how we determine whether to issue a patent
or not, how the prior art defines the scope of coverage that an applicant is
entitled to, and so on and so forth.
The USPTO has granted a
patent on faster than light communication. You can read about it here
and here
Th
e USPTO will grant you anything, even the patently impossible. You just have to
write it down. The quotes are misinformation, a patent has nothing to do with
invention. It is the supposedly infringer who has to do all the work and bear
all the cost of disproving the patent.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:29 AM EST |
Maybe somebody in a patent suit about such an absurd patent should sue the USPTO
for negligence in issuing it. I'm sure that such a suit could get help from
patent-reform groups.
It might be interesting to include language about the USPTO getting into
software patenting against caselaw at the time they made the decision.
Unfortunately, I doubt this part would succeed, as I believe the Supreme Court
has already refused to review a software patent case, but it seems worth
trying.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: alextangent on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:36 AM EST |
"In order to modify an existing front end compiler for an existing source
language, such as Pascal, COBAL, C++, etc..."
COBAL?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:38 AM EST |
It took me less than 15 seconds to reach around to my bookshelf, consult THE
book on Compiler Construction, and come up with the following blurbs:
----------------------
Intermediate Code Generation
In the analysis-synthesis model of a compiler, the front end translates a source
program into an intermediate representation from which the back end generates
target code. Details of the target language are confined to the back end, as far
as possible.
-----------------------
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
UNCOL (for Universal Compiler Oriented Language) is a mythical universal
intermediate language, sought since the mid 1950's. Given an UNCOL, the committe
report by Strong et al. [1958] showed how compiler could be constructed by
hooking a front end for a given source language with a back end for a given
target language.
-----------------------
...1958 is before 1999, right?
The book I'm looking at is "Compilers Principles, Techniques, and
Tools" (aka "The Dragon Book") , by Aho, Sethi and Ullman; (c)
1986 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.; Reprinted with corrections March,
1988, Reproduced by Addison-Wesley as ISBN 0-201-10088-6 and stored on my
bookshelf since I took Compiler Construction at Queen's University in 1996.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Aho, Alfred V.
Compilers, principles, techniques and tools.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Compiling (Electronic compuiters) I. Sethi,
Ravi. II. Ullman, Jeffrey D., 1942- . III. Title.
QA76.75.C65A37 1985 05.4'53 85-15647
ISBN 0-201-10088-6
Excerpts were from Chapter 8, "Intermediate Languages", pages 463
(intro to chapter) and 511 (chapter epilogue). I didn't have time to read
anything else, but at least I had the 15 seconds to do the basic research a
patent examiner should have.
I suppose there are other real-world examples worth mentioning: p2c and c-front.
The former is a Pascal compiler; the later is the original C++ compiler. They
both use C as an intermediate language, and C as an intermediate language is a
VERY common paradigm for people writing quickie compilers (I've done it myself
for a couple of custom VHLLs).
/. 163409 (multipart/mixed)
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:39 AM EST |
Don't forget things like Informix's 4GL. This was embedded SQL with C code...
-Mikebmw[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:44 AM EST |
This confuses me:
"And what you get is a lot of people
that look at the title of the invention or some abstract or whatever and just
come to these conclusions with respect to, 'how could the USPTO issue a patent'
on such and such? But they haven't actually looked at the legal scope of
coverage; they're more or less looking at a broad concept that's described in
the patent as opposed to the claims that define the legal scope of the
coverage."
So, he is saying that what is described in the
patent is not really what is covered by the patent? How then, do I, the lowly
inventor or small business man, determine if my idea infringes on someone's
patent if the patent does not accurately describe what a patent's "legal scope"
is?
I read that he is admitting to what the real purpose of patents has
become. Because the published patent does not describe the "legal scope" of the
patent, one must pay large legal fees for analysis of all patents before doing
anything innovative. Therefore, the purpose of patents is to block any possible
competition with huge legal fee barriers before they can even start. Just get a
broadly worded but narrow "legal scope" patent granted and any potential
competition has to hire attorneys instead of simply reading the
patent.
Sucks.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: stuart_b on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:45 AM EST |
"And what you get is a lot of people that look at the title of the
invention or some abstract or whatever and just come to these conclusions with
respect to, 'how could the USPTO issue a patent' on such and such? But they
haven't actually looked at the legal scope of coverage; they're more or less
looking at a broad concept that's described in the patent as opposed to the
claims that define the legal scope of the coverage."
I guess he's sort of right: Obviously any prior art shown in the patent is
excluded from coverage. And the same for any demonstrated by third parties
afterward--but of course that requires a trial (he-he).
And Microsoft's totally right about "innovation". Here their
innovation has been to make their claims vague and inclusive enough as to cover
ANYTHING similar that isn't included in prior art. Elsewhere they have
innovated by forcing system vendors to do things (that the system vendors can
legally do) on their behalf that would have been illegal for them to do
themselves--shielding themselves against the letter of anti-trust laws. (And of
course further protecting themselves by making those arrangements subject to
protection as trade secrets.) See, they ARE great innovators.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: muswell100 on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:48 AM EST |
So how about patenting a "system of creating wealth through the purchase of
software patents"? Every time someone tries to use a software patent to
extract money from someone else, they have to pay the patent holder a fee. The
patent holder may then choose to pay the money back to the company(ies) using
the original patent to extort money from the target company in the first place.
Since this income is derived from the application of that same "system of
creating wealth through the purchase of software patents", the patent
holders will have to pay a further fee to the patent holders. The patent
holders, however, pay back this sum to the same company and the whole cycle
starts again...
PS: This IS a joke...
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Nick_UK on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 11:48 AM EST |
This is frightening really.
We all know MS have been applying for patents by the truck
load, whether those patents are prior art of just
downright ludicrous (the to-do et al).
BUT who has to contend the patent? The original owner?
The world at large on a known prior art?
This is where the trouble starts. Now, SCO are in a
similar boat, but as we know with MS money they have
managed to sustain a lengthy court case and at every
opportunity are drawing it out.
Who could take on MS and it's money mountain in the
courts? OSS? I doubt it. MS along with the patents can
produce a legal battle that will cost millions before it
even reaches the courts. Nobody or any one Company can
stop them in that area.
What needs to be addressed is the law (patent law). Just
because it's law doesn't mean it is right or correct.
Nick [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:17 PM EST |
The new Luxemburg presidency has made one of their top priorities to introduce software
patents in the EU.
Since the directive may not pass if it comes to an honest
voting, the patent mafia will continue to do everything they can to push this
through with dirty tricks instead.
Once again, EU citizens, please do what
you can. The German and Dutch governments should not be allowed to continue
ignoring their own parliaments will in this question!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: vegard on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:19 PM EST |
I'm just thinking....what if, instead of taking the trouble of going through
court for every patent, you just validated their invalidness, and put them on a
list of "patents we're willing to defend law suits against" ? A
defense fund, so to say?
Would it be likely that you were granted your legal costs if you're sued by a
patent holder, and the patent is found invalid?
Of course, you'd have to be pretty sure before you put things on such a list.
Whether or not you could trust that the court system would come to the same
conclusion, is entirely different...
The point would, of course, be to make it expensive to try to enforce bad
patents. And easy/safe to ignore them.
A secondary point would of course be to point out the obviousness of a lot of
patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:29 PM EST |
Regular patents are required to be accompanied with diagrams and specifications
of the given invention. You have to be able to build the invention from the
patent application. The entire shebang is available to the public - meaning that
anyone can take a patent application and reproduce the invention. This would be
illegal in most cases, but there you are.
I say we subject software inventions to the same requirements that physical
inventions must meet - all source code and build scripts must be made available
to the public to qualify for a patent. The same for copyright.
How quickly would companies like MSFT and SCOX back off using patents and
copyright against F/LOSS ??
Feel free to petition your congressional representatives if you like the idea.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:39 PM EST |
A couple points:
Microsoft is not patenting "secrets" as PJ suggests. Patents are
<b>always</b> written with expansive language so that they cover
other instantiations of the claims beyond the example that is disclosed. This
does not extend the reach of the patent to cover additional claims that have not
been disclosed; that would be silly. True, the language is sometimes made
overly inclusive, because it generally hurts more if you err on the side of
making a too narrow claim, than if you make a broader claim that later is more
narrowly interpreted by a court.
When you read a patent, you have to be <b>very</b> careful to see
<b>exactly</b> what is claimed. In the compiler patent, they are
not patenting a system for compiling multiple languages with a common back-end.
They are patenting a compiler system where the front-end processes source files
as well as intermediate representations created from other source files. This
is different from a traditional compiler heirarchy with compiler and linker
steps. Specifically, GCC does <b>NOT</b> do this. It could be that
Mono's mcs compiler does.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: shareme on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:47 PM EST |
Okay folks its obvious that we need to gatehr soem friends of FOSS..
PJ, I would liek to suggest that we start a List doucemnting all Patents given
rolaty free to all tech players to encourage innovation and their woerns..
In this way we will know which companies and groups to band together with to
fight the MS patent club and eventually kill it..
Suggest Areas to start:
On Computer Langauge Compiling:
Xeorox PARC
IBM
Apple
Red Hat
HP
SUN
I realize that I am asking for everyone to do some work/research..
I can only say that as a community united we STANd divided we Fall under
MS..Wheels of destruction..
The part I am grabbing for this weekend is the Xeorx Patents used in the
compiler byte code manipution feature od Eclipse IDe...
PJ, what details do we need? I know we need the patent number, the summary,
Orginal Patent owner, org that patent was royalty free contributed to...but what
else?
---
Sharing and thinking is only a crime in those societies where freedom doesn't
exist.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:48 PM EST |
This is would be very silly if I did not think it was serious.
I would
just like to be able to run my computer, my compiler, editor, etc. without
worry. I want to be able to do the same things I did before 2000 after 2000. (I
really want to be able to do this for the rest of my life).
I've allready
got ideas on how to improve compilers/editors while I have not talked to anyone
yet. Anyone know how I can protect myself?
Also I just checked out the US Patent and Trademark Office
It looks
like they are getting ready to update US law to be more compatible with
'international' law. On Feb 3-4, 2005 they are having a meeting on it.Any one
have any good ideas of what the best way for a US citizen to provide input at
this meeting. (I'm not sure making patent law more like everyone else is the
right thing.Unless it is to make it more like Europe, where software is not
patentable. I am still thinking this through).
Does anyone know if there
is a research and development exception so I can develop new ideas then only
check them out when they look promising, and I ready to publish, or
commercialize, or submit under GPL etc?
I'm sorry about the 'shortness' of
this message but I'm home for lunch and read this and wanted to reply. I go back
to work shortly.
A florida guy.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 12:59 PM EST |
Just to play devils advocate, and to try to get clear ansswers of the mistakes,
are the patents mistakes, and if so how? To get it out of the way, no I have
not read the patents and will not because I am I a programmer.
From what PJ said, it sounds like the editor/debugger might be a legitimate
claim. It sounds like it's a case were you are stepping the the code in a
debugger, get to (oh say) line 500, and go into the source listing in the
debugger and change the code at and after line 500, and then continue to step
through the new code. So the debugger compiles the new version of the code and
inserts it into the running image in the debugger. I can't honestly say I've
see that before, but I know I don't know all that has been done in the computing
world. Is that what this patent is for, and if so, has anyone seen something
like?
I know off the top of my head how I'd implement it and it wouldn't be too hard,
but that doesn't mean it's been done before. I guess the implementation seems
trivial to me, but the need for it was a bit obscure. I know in dbx, I can
evaluate code that is already in the program and skip code I don't want to run.
That's not quite the same, but usually all I've ever wanted.
Second, the compiler patent. I saw a number of people mention that compilers
use an intermediate language between front ends and back end. That doesn't
sound like what PJ described. It sounds like the trick was that the multiple
languages were in the same file. That and analysing the languages together. If
that is right, the first thing that comes to mind for me is perl's Inline
modules. Inline a mess on non-perl code in you perl scripts. Yehaw. But I'm
not sure it pre-dates the patent. Second, I know perl is working on the ability
to deal with multiple grammers (languages) in a single file. The perl6 grammers
would be powerful enough to implement multiple languages in the same file and
even the same code block. But I'm not sure when they first discussed using
grammers to modify the compile time parsing.
I know several compilers for various languages that let you inline the language
and assembler, but is there any that allow mixing two or more non-assembler
languages if the same source file? (I figure they could tap-dance the assembler
situation easier than if you could show the mixing of Pascal, Fortran, LISP and
COBOL all in one file.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:09 PM EST |
...meaning that we supposedly aren't qualified to judge them for their decisions
on patents. But on the other hand, what evidence has the USPTO given to show us
that they have the competence to judge the innovativeness of
software? --- m(_ _)m [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Philip Stephens on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:30 PM EST |
Recently I had reason to look up some patents awarded to Apple, Nintento and
Commodore on circuits for producing a computer video display compatible with
NTSC and PAL TV's. This was purely to satisfy my own curiousity about how some
of the original personal computers and game consoles achieved such a
technological feat (I'm a computer history buff).
Now, I have to say that it's pretty neat that I could learn about how these
companies solved a particular technological challenge by reading their patents.
But by the time I'd read through all 5 patents (3 by Apple, one each by Nintendo
and Commodore), I realised two things: (1) the patent problem isn't just
restricted to software, and (2) the problem has existed for a long time, 25
years at least, maybe longer.
Let me explain. The 5 patents I printed off from the USPTO web site (4,136,359;
4,217,604; 4,278,972; 4,569,019; and 4,8234,106) are all essentially describing
the same invention! And yet, the USPTO decided to award a patent on the same
invention to 3 different companies!
Okay, so the details of each invention differ. The Apple patents describe how
the video for the Apple ][ computer was generated, the Nintendo patent describes
the video generated by the NES game console, and the Commodore patent describes
an IC used to generate video similiar to that found in the Commodore 64.
However, the fundemental approaches used to produce a video signal compatible
with NTSC and PAL were identical in all the patents.
Furthermore, and this is what really made me realise what a crock most patents
are, there is no way that a hardware engineer could actually reproduce these 5
inventions by following the "blueprints" in these patents. For you
see, the patents only provide a high-level overview of how the inventions work,
with simple block diagrams showing the layout of the components. There are no
detailed circuit diagrams, no electrical signal timing diagrams; in short,
nothing resembling complete blueprints at all.
So, just imagine that you're a company who wants to do the right thing and
license one of these patents. Will Apple, Nintendo or Commodore then give you
actual blueprints for these inventions once you've forked over the cash? Or
will you have to do all the R&D necessary to fill in the gaps, spending
thousands or maybe millions of dollars in the process? For what do you get from
licensing one of these patents? Just a vague description of how your circuit
SHOULD work once it's finished! That's it!
Because these patents are essentially useless as a way of reproducing the
inventions, the patent holders are effectively patenting the IDEAS behind the
inventions, not the inventions themselves. The blueprints for the real
inventions are still being kept secret by Apple, Nintendo and Commodore (the
latter a defunct company), perhaps never to see the light of day.
So is this how the patent system was supposed to work? Somehow I don't think
so. Yet it is clear that companies have been exploiting problems with the
USPTO's procedures for decades, allowing them to bypass the requirement that a
patented invention be fully specified in return for 20 years of protection. For
decades, companies have been able to patent inventions without ever giving up
their actual blueprints! They've been getting the best of both worlds: the
ability to get their competitors to cough up money for the privilege of using
their invention, while not actually telling their competitors how to build it!
If you ask me, either the USPTO needs to be reformed so that it won't accept
patent applications unless they include complete blueprints of an invention; or
we need to dismantle the patent system altogether and force companies to rely on
trade secrets (which they're doing anyway with one hand while asking licensing
fees for their patents with the other).[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Thanks - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 07:55 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:31 PM EST |
My copy of the "Univac 1100 Exec 8 JOVIAL Programmer Reference" (c)
1969,1973 by the Sperry Rand Corporation describes in chapter 10 what it calls
"Direct Code", where you can insert assembly language in your JOVIAL
source code and compile it into one application.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Yep... - Authored by: jbeadle on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 03:44 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 01:38 PM EST |
I'm a bit surprised that Microsoft took this long to patent the compiler
"innovation". They've been doing something like this forever. Going way
back to the Days of DOS, the first pass of Microsoft's multipass compilers were
translating source code into an intermediate "language" that the second and
third passes acted on. I'm told that the later passes were the same regardless
of the source language (C, Pascal, FORTRAN, etc.). I never tried verifying that
by using the second/third pass programs from, say, their C compiler on the
output of the first pass of their FORTRAN compiler. It made a lot of sense at
the time. I'm not all that surprised that they might still be doing that.
(Heck, I understand that the deprecation of old GW-BASIC features only recently
was left out of Microsoft's BASIC language.) It would have made it easier to
crank out compilers for additional languages. Sort of clever, I guess.
But
worthy of a patent? Hmm... I'm not so sure about that.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: eckenheimer on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 02:04 PM EST |
Here's a
link to an old (but funny) humor piece:
"REDMOND, WA -- In what CEO
Bill Gates called 'an unfortunate but
necessary step to protect our
intellectual property from theft and
exploitation by competitors,' the
Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers
one and zero..."
--- In a
world without walls or fences, who needs windows or gates? [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 02:37 PM EST |
Is sarcasm impolite? [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 03:25 PM EST |
If people are going to look for prior art they should be looking at MIPS
innovations in the 80's and 90's. MIPS commercialized u-code compilers
(invented at Stanford I think in the late 70's) which permitted global
optimization across Fortran, Pascal, C++ and Ada. MIPS ucode was really at the
forefront of optimization technology in the 80's. And yes, I could compile my
C++ code, inlining my ucode library and generate a single object if that is what
this patent is about. And no I dont think MIPS was first, but they did do it
particularly well.
As far as the " Method and system for editing software programs"
patent, it's called Fix+Continue and has been available in the MIPS Pro IDE
since the mid-90's. The only difference is that I dont know if the current
(>MIPS III) compilers use an IL (intermediate language) - I think
Fix+Continue was specifically C/C++. Unless the Microsoft patent achieves a
"Fix+Continue" with global inlining (and why bother) the existence of
an IL seems totally irrelevant, but I am not knowledgable about patent logic...
Also, I never thought this was an SGI invention. Doesn't this feature also
exist in HPUX/Solaris/AIX/OSF/whatever IDE?
Karsten[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 03:31 PM EST |
I think that this is a very interesting topic, being a lawyer myself (but not a
patent lawyer).
I propose that one or more patent lawyers who read this site analyze the claims
of the patents in some detail and then see if prior art that actually relates to
the claimed invention can be identified by Groklaw readers.
If what is claimed as the real invention can be fleshed out by a patent attorney
or two, this might be a good place to identify, and document, prior art.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 03:43 PM EST |
One to test MS patents validity!
The community would pay the money for it for the trial itself.
Let's calculate 5 million FOSS users each pay 10$ = 10 M $
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 04:14 PM EST |
PJ,
Having two software patent applications in my name, I can tell you a bit about
why patent language is as obfuscated and vague as you found it to be.
There are three reasons:
1. You want to claim as much ground as possible. The description of the
technology serves as an example, the claims are the meat of the patent.
2. You don't want the competition to easily figure out what you're actually
doing while still protecting what you're doing in case of need. Obfuscation as
well as embedding what you're doing in dozens of additional claims serves that
purpose.
3. You want to discourage the patent office from examining your patent to
closely. Obfuscation serves this purpose well.
Item two is, of course, in crass violation of the spirit of patents and three is
just nasty lawyer tactics.
IANAL, but IAASE.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:08 PM EST |
The more outrageous patents that appear, the easier it is to show people that
the system isn't working.
I'm throwing down a gauntlet:
Who can file (and obtain) the most proposterous patent?
My money is on the people at Redmond.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:30 PM EST |
I have now read about half of the first patent, and I am in need of some
explanation of patent law. This patent is absolutely full of prior art by any
common sense definition. Almost every paragraph describes something that I have
seen before, sometimes in many different systems. There may, however, be some
original (I didn't say earth shattering) suggestions. For example, the reading
of type information from the intermediate rep by all the various front ends as a
requirement (though similar to header pre-compilation) may be novel (please
correct me).
So the question is, do I violate a patent
1) if I implent one or more of the ***novel*** ideas in a patent
2) Only if I implement the whole patent including all the ideas?
If 1), how am I supposed to know which of the ideas is contended to be novel
when they are not clearly identified as such in the patent. Also, if this is
the case, why dont I just take the shotgun approach to patent filing. How about
a million page compendium of random thoughts. If some of them turn out to be
original my patent on those will be valid and I only have to file once.
If 2), who cares. It would be easy to circumvent a patent as long and full of
minutiae as this one, simply by doing something slightly differently.
This patent is clearly not a single invention. At best, it is one or two
middling ideas mixed in with a large amount of completely generic software
engineering.
Karsten[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:52 PM EST |
I said this before and now it seems even more relevant. Why would anyone in
their right mind implement a technology that is:
1. Created by a software monopoly, known for their "trade mark"
business practices that border on criminal.
2. Patent encumbered by that same monopoly.
Do we really want to go down the path of polluting free and open source software
with stuff like that? There is heaps of other stuff we could focus our
development effort on, not MS clones.
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I had to get it off my chest.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: rweiler on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 05:59 PM EST |
People shouldn't get their knickers in too much of a knot over the 'fix and
continue' patent because while it seems like a nice idea, in practice, it is of
relatively little value other than a marketing bullet point. The problem is
that most fix and continue schemes (including this one) can't back up the input
data to what it was before your fix, so as often as not, you have to restart
anyway (note, before Microsoft gets any funny ideas, there are ways to implement
this if it was really useful) In addition, you should be debugging modules in
isolation before they ever get into a huge long running program (where this
feature is most useful). Finally, modern computers are so fast that it just
doesn't take that long to restart even big programs so FOSS doesn't lose all
that much by not having this feature. At most, it can save a few minutes a day.
---
Sometimes the measured use of force is the only thing that keeps the world from
being ruled by force. -- G. W. Bush
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- One last point - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:08 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:43 PM EST |
It seems obvious to me. In the .NET framework, multiple languages are supported.
The compiler claim describes a method for re-using interface declarations of
libraries in various languages.
Thus, if someone writes a .NET library, they only need to write *one* interface
declaration, which can then be used with any .NET language. (I think these are
C#, J#, VB.NET at the moment).
GCC certainly does not allow you to use java header files in your C programs for
example. My take on the patent's validity, is the following:
1) To my knowledge, no-one ever needed to do this before, thus no-one has done
it. Library vendors have generally been providing separate header files for
various languages to interface with their libraries.
2) No matter what the exact method used are, there must be a translation from
one type of source to another. Source code translation has been done before.
So, we have commonly used methods to perform a novel task. The task's novelty
cannot make the invention patentable by itself. If the way they have used known
methods to perform the task is not *obvious* then the patent is valid.
However, in that case, I think that if one does the same task using some other,
perhaps more obvious, method, then one does not infringe on this patent: i.e.
the patent's scope is extremely limited.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Dr.Dubious DDQ on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 06:53 PM EST |
The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to the (possibly
erroneous) conclusion that most people misunderstand what patents were
originally supposed to be for.
Obviously, wealthy corporations and some
wealthy patent lawyers like to say that patents are for "making sure inventors
get money", though most of us can see that's not accurate.
On the other
hand, I don't think it's quite accurate to even say that patents were intended
to "protect inventors", either.
The formal language in the Constitution
just says "promote the progress of science and the useful arts", nothing about
"protecting inventors" (or even "making sure corporations get
paid")[1].
From my (again, admittedly possibly flawed) perspective,
patents were effectively a mechanism for "the public", through its government,
to "buy" trade secrets. The monopoly protection for patent holders seems to me
not to have been the purpose of patents, but merely the metaphorical
"payment" that holders of trade secrets got in exchange for making that trade
secret available for the rest of the public to build from.
If my
perspective is reasonable and accurate, it seems to me that the USPTO shoudln't
even merely be examining whether or not there is real prior art (though some of
THAT would be nice, too), but also evaluating, in general, whether or not the
"patented" information will be valuable to the public for future
innovation.
Never mind whether or not Dropping to one knee to hit a tennis ball (US
Pat#5,993,336) or Swinging sideways on a swingset (US Pat#6,368,227) has
prior art. Based on my perspective, it's more important to ask whether or not
the public would actually be losing anything if either of those had been kept
"trade secrets" instead. Exclusive rights are valuable, and The Public should
not be spending them on just anything. (I think the "obvious to someone in the
field" criteria is supposed to address this, but obviously doesn't seem too.
Have any of us NOT pulled alternately on each chain on a swingset to make the
swing go sideways in our youth?...)
Am I monumentally naive, or has the
patent process been perverted even further than they cynical among us (myself
included) have previously noticed?...
[1] I'm saying all of this from
memory. If I've gotten the details wrong, I suppose my only defense is that I
attended public school. In California. Corrections welcome, but please speak
slowly and use small words, for the aforementioned reason :-) [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: argee on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 08:06 PM EST |
It seems to me that by mentioning GCC as prior art, that
MS has declared gcc as a valid, non-infringing program at
least as of the date of the patent application.
---
--
argee[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jim Reiter on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 10:01 PM EST |
Remember, Caldera/TSG has maintained a Ip law suit against IBM for almost two
years without any proof of ownership of Patents and/or Copyrights (IP).
What does M$# think they can do with a questionable Patent? Sue, sue, sue.
There has to be significant risk for a company filing bogus lawsuits like this.
TSG need to be punished for this, put out of business if that is possible.
BTW, having a Patent should not be exculpatory. If a company sues on what
latter turns out to be an invalid Patent, the suing company should be
responsible for full cost, damages and penalities.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 12:05 AM EST |
not sure how this helps:
<snip>
ANALYSIS AND LESSONS
First and foremost, diagnosing this problem as a black box would have been
impossible. Only detailed traces of actual system behavior enabled the
faulty execution sequence to be captured and identified.
Secondly, leaving the "debugging" facilities in the system saved the
day.
Without the ability to modify the system in the field, the problem could not
have been corrected.
</snip>
from:
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?q=Space+shuttle+inversion+of+priority&hl=e
n&lr=&client=firefox-a&selm=CMM.0.90.1.881704091.risko%40chiron.csl.
sri.com&rnum=2[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jim Reiter on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 12:12 AM EST |
If Linux/Open Source becomes outlawed in the United States and Europe, Data
Processing can move to Asian countries where there would be no restrictions on
what software companies use.
"When Linux is outlawed, only outlaws will have Linux."
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: AdultSupervision on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 01:10 AM EST |
Create a purely mathematical language - I mean one that uses math as its source
code. No procedures, no objects, no nothing but math as you see it in your
hated college calculus textbooks.
Programs are stored as formulas.
Math can't be patented.
*every* computer program ever written is actually math, but expressed in a
language easier on the brains of mere mortals.
Then start teaching jr and sr high school kids *real* math.
Once you start writing widgets, etc in math, then software patents start to fall
apart.
---
All my witty sigs are made up by me, excluding this one, which I made up but
isn't witty.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 02:43 AM EST |
back in the 80s on the early PCs I worked with a language called
"snoball" which took what was pretty much plain english and converted
it into byte code, which then was compiled into binary. you could hook other
things from other languages into that byte code, and generate one final binary.
that seems to be pretty much the same thing.
heck, I guess you could claim the old util called "automenu" did the
same thing, turned a plain english language set of text files into byte-code
which then got "compiled" into a binary.
couldnt a whole bunch of things from this period apply? like comal, forth, and
what of ADA, etc? I remember all the talk that things like ADA would
revolutionize the world... uh, sure it will ;) and then there is always really
weird stuff like Prolog. and how about lisp? these are still current...
but i doubt anyone remembers this stuff....[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 03:06 AM EST |
given it is "late" in the information age, and there are so many
people and so much prior art, I am wondering if, in the general sense, there
could atually be any "new" software inventions.
Again, I am talking generally. certainly there are wide areas of medical science
and research that have lots of room left. but when talking about general use of
computers, internet, and such, is there really any room left? I mean, havent we
"been there and done that" to death by this point?
i mean there are only so many different ways you can peel an apple... or
whatever.
I personally would see an "internet" based patent as frivolous at this
point. I mean, a patent based on how you click a button on a webpage?
puh-leeze!
I remember, back in the day when you couldn't use the "/" in a
computer program to bring up a menu, because Lotus had a strangle-hold on this
and would sue anyone or any company to death who even attempted to use this
feature. Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet) was the defacto standard and no one could
compete, because of a stupid thing as to how you brought up the menu.
no one would buy anything else because the menu was too different. companies
tried, but got sued if they used the "/" - I remember this happened a
few times.
in this particular case, does anyone know if the "/" is now safe,
because Lotus is now IBM, and so forth, history has moved on.
silly things like this are just stupid.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 11:52 AM EST |
I know that OSDL has a leagal defense fund, but we need lots of people from
everywhere around the world to donate to it. Then when Some 800lb gorrilla wants
to sue a tiny company or the fsf there will be a container of money contributed
by everyone that's large enough to hold out. Meaning it's just going to be very
expensive for the 800lb gorrilla and in the end they won't win.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Cathail on Wednesday, January 05 2005 @ 01:31 PM EST |
Had to come out of my long time lurk mode and add another prior art example on
the debugger patent.
In the early 90s there were products for a number of Unix platforms from
Centerline Software. The products were called CodeCenter, ObjectCenter, and
CenterLine C/C++ and among other things included a compiler and what they called
a source-level debugger.
The debugger allowed specifying that one or more modules used in building a
binary that it was debugging to be interpreted from the original C/C++ during
execution. While being a bit slow, this allowed you to modify the source and see
the effects of the changes while stepping through the code without re-building
or re-running.
It also allowed rebuilding a single object file and reloading just that one
object file without re-starting.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 06 2005 @ 08:06 PM EST |
Ops! "tsunami" reference BAD Idea. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 06 2005 @ 09:25 PM EST |
<i>Here's my entry:
"We need these patents so we can kill off Free and Open Source
software."</i>
Actually, its also a disadvantage for small businesses who normally cannot
easily afford buying a patent or a lawyer. Even when they do, the big
corporations (e.g. IBM, Microsoft -- Yes IBM has a huge patent portfolio!) can
just say 'oh but your application infringes patent X we own' then that costs
them a lot of money to research and in the end its just better to cross license
elseway their software project dies. Its just evil. Quite frankly i almost find
it criminal behaviour from a moral standpoint.
This was also coverted at RMS and 2 FFII guys' speech at ITCollege Estonia. Here
it is:
RMS: http://www.itcollege.ee/dl/OGG/avaloeng10_1.ogg
FFII: http://www.itcollege.ee/dl/OGG/avaloeng10_2.ogg[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 07 2005 @ 10:45 PM EST |
And maybee a tip for the US.
The law, both U.S and european, through
international treatys as TRIPS, WIPO and the Berneconvention says that software
should be protected as litterary works, logical, it is something you write. Now,
what they want europeans to swallow is basicly this, start with the
law:
[X] shall be protected as [X] (copyright)
then take the
argument that the EPO and a lot of lawyers want us to:
[X] is not an [X]
as such if [condition that is always true]
But hey... the same three
international treaties also says that we are not allowed to legislate in a way
which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably
prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder.
Everytime a
computerprogram infringes a patent, or the use of one in the way the autor
intended, it is an unreasonable prejudice on the authors legitimate interests. A
lawmaking that TRIPS, WIPO and the Berneconvention forbids us to do, and it does
not matter if the patent is about such konceptual objects that copyright is not
considered to protect (ideas). The patent prejudices the author unfairly,
because he is denyed his exclusivety by the reason that he wrote it (the
patented effect). In perfect analogy to that music in audible form is the reason
that the musician wrote it, and to divorce him from the performance of the work
on a machine is to deny him the reason that the work is authored (wonder what
RIAA has to say about that.. The data of CDs not fully protected under
copyright, since it can be technical method for producing soundwawes with a
microchip and other technical equipment).
If countries really where
allowed to do this, reinterpret laws and redefine software to be a technical
field, countries could as well do it to TRIPS article 27:
Patents shall
be available for any [A], whether products or processes in all fields of
technology.
Now suppose Europe legisaltes that:
[A] is not an [A] as
such if [condition that is always true]
I'm quite sure we would see the
U.S take E.U straight to the WTO if we tried this....
If lawyers can
redefine what a computer program is to make it fit their purpose by their
preferential right of interpretation, then they could just as well say that the
earth is flat to fit another purpose, would politicians also be fooled by
this?
Is it reasonable that ones right to make money through a granted
monopoly outwights another mans freedom of expression? - If someone says yes.. i
hope we not meet IRL. Voltaire: "I may disagree with what you say, but I
will
defend to the death your right to say it"
It all boils down to the
word "unreasonably". Is it reasonable to allow someone to prejudice authors
legitimate interests by allowing patents on the reason that the author wrote his
work?
One could argue that copyright isn't all that exclusive, there are
other laws too. - But of course authors have to live under the law, but nations
isn't allowed unfairly prejudice authors as they please. This logic fails when
taken to extremes: Do authors have all the rights to publish their works even if
they are illegal according to, say censorship (copyright totally exclusive to
other laws)? No of course not - this would mean that authors could do whatever
they like illegally. Can Governments do whatever they like without respect of
how these affect the exclusive rights of authors? No of course not- the treaties
would be worthless. If you take either to the extreme it would fail because it
would mean either that the treaty was worthless or that people can write illegal
content. The answer lies in between and the unreasonable prejudice standard is
key.
Luckily, lawyers do not exist in a vacuum away from the laws of
physics and economics anymore than programmers live independently from the law.
What lawyers accepts or not isn't law in an absolute sense, there is no agreed
starting point. There is a basic reason to why we have both prosecuting and
defending lawyers, but it will be a huge problem for the justice if lawyers on
both sides, with their
preferential right of interpretation in court, doesent
accept truth and consequence and treats their interpretations as absolute. I
think we have a little of that problem today, especially when politicians put
too much weight on this kind of orthodox legal thinking rather
than the law and
it's consequences, especially when you clearly can see what that way of thinking
has led to in the US. [ Reply to This | # ]
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