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Rollover image on your website? That will be $80,000 (please) (arstechnica.com)
352 points by bluesmoon on Oct 14, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 177 comments



I'm not a violent person. But patent trolls make me have visions of dungeons and medieval tools...

They're like parasites that try to find the optimal amount of blood that they can suck out of healthy businesses without killing them.

Novartis having the moral high ground in a lawsuit is rare enough that that alone should give you pause as to how low these people really are.

There are times that I wished I was a Catholic so I could condemn types like this - and mr. McBride - to hell.

Failing that, debtors prison would be fine with me as well.


The good news for those who were otherwise disappointed in the Supreme Court's recent upholding of process patents in the Bilski case: courts are using that decision to be more vigilant in striking down more and more flaky patents on the ground that they represent nothing more than attempts to gain a monopoly on abstract ideas (for a recent discussion of this trend, see http://ipspotlight.com/2010/08/19/district-court-rules-inter...). This gives hope that companies like Novartis, who have chosen to fight (and particularly to be proactive in launching the fight in Delaware as opposed to getting sucked into the Eastern District of Texas), may be well-positioned to get this sort of patent invalidated.

The bad news: Litigation abuses are today all too common and these are not likely to go away any time soon. In this sense, modern litigation actively encourages many forms of shake-down lawsuits, as every public company is painfully aware and as even many startups discover to their dismay as they begin to grow into larger ventures. Patent trolling is a particularly malevolent form of this vice and certainly makes you want to scream and, indeed, hope that some form cosmic justice will one day punish those who practice that particular art.


In conversation the CEO of a (very) large company in the US refered to it as 'a cost of business'.

It's worked in to the cost of each and every product we buy.

Sad, really.


It's a cost you can hedge against by owning shares in companies that use patents aggressively. (If you can stomach that morally.)

I read a study one time that suggested patents did not stifle innovation in the macro because you typically have to be large and successful before you're targeted for infringing on them. The real cost is that many lawyers and judges are employed in the unproductive pursuit of resolving patent litigation when they could instead spend that in other professions making something of value. I wonder if anyone has any numbers on the total value of labor employed creating, licensing, attacking, defending, etc. patents and patent lawsuits in the world today.


There are times that I wished I was a Catholic so I could condemn types like this - and mr. McBride - to hell.

FYI, we're specifically enjoined against doing that. Final disposition of all souls is up to God. (We think we know roughly what he is looking for because He told us a few times and we can reason through the rest, but the list of people for whom final dispositions are known is really short -- off the top of my head, saints, martyrs, and baptized infants who die prior to reaching the age where they can be held morally responsible for sin can be safely declared to be in heaven, and that list is exclusive. Many people are under the misapprehension that suicide is an auto-fail. This is not the case: quoting the Catechism, "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.")

Returning you now to your regularly scheduled topics of interest to hackers.


Not all Catholics are good Catholics in their interpretation of scripture (that's why they have priests ;) ) and even though you are enjoined against doing that I'm sure it's been done before.

As for the downvotes, I think your little lecture is setting up some serious cognitive dissonance in peoples heads along the lines of them being unable to cope with being an obviously very smart guy that is also very religious.

As if the one should automatically make it impossible to be the other. I have to consciously remind myself not to fall in to that trap and to recognize that my atheism is as much a result of indoctrination as your Catholicism probably is.

I think you're pretty brave for wearing that religious badge so openly in a place that is clearly biased towards the atheist walk of life, and filled with people who tend to see someones religion as an accident of birth rather than one that was arrived at by the scientific method or the choice of a free will but by indoctrination instead.


He means he wishes he believed in Hell, so he could believe patent trolls went there.


What?

Are you serious?


I'm confused as to the reaction to this post. Someone made an offhanded remark about something they think that Catholics do: condemning people to hell. We don't do that. It is important that we don't do that, both internally (salvation is kind of a hot topic in theology) and externally (i.e. anyone with the understanding that Catholics are routinely saying "X is going to hell" is likely to have a poor opinion of us, based off of misinformed prejudice). So I tried replying with the thumbnail sketch of what the Church actually teaches regarding this.


There is a certain crowd of atheists that believe religion--any religion--is not merely incorrect but is actually transparently irrational. Notionally, that if a religious person would just take an afternoon and think carefully over what he knows, he must either (A) become an atheist or (B) be quite intellectually dishonest or (C) not be very smart.

It naturally follows that atheists are inherently smarter or at least more honest than religious folks of any stripe. So when someone from this crowd comes across a religious person who is plainly intelligent, who indeed they look up to, who clearly cares and thinks about religious things . . . well, the result is generally some sort of spit-take. I see it once or twice a month at least.

I expect some folks are a bit shell-shocked that the great patio11 also claims to be Catholic.


I'm an atheist and think it is transparently irrational, however, not to those afflicted by the more virulent forms of religion from early childhood.

I would expect completely freeing oneself from the effects of such an upbringing would take years, if not a lifetime, and come at considerable cost to one's friends and familial relationships. You would have to be callous and remarkably ignorant of human psychology to think it could be overcome in an afternoon of contemplation.

I've known many smart but religious people, so I'm not terribly shocked. However, I'm yet to encounter -- and doubtful I ever will -- an intelligent person, raised in a healthy, secure and atheistic home, who as an adult earnestly embraced some established religion like Catholicism.


Here's an anecdote: A friend of mine, a girl who studied mathematics with me, got herself christened when she was around 20. Her parents aren't in any church. She grew up in atheist East Germany.

It's seems quite rare for adults to change their religion, though.


G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, talked about the problem with crazy people. Talk to someone who believes crazy things -- say, a conspiracy theorist or a cultist -- and you will find that they are not, as you might suppose, without reason. They have a reason for everything. Indeed, they have too much reason -- an answer for every question, an explanation for every objection, a reason for everything from why their legs hurt to why the stars twinkle. The government did it.

It's easy to make up stories to explain experience. And they can be ruthlessly consistent stories. But the problem is that many of them are clearly wrong. One of the hallmarks of a crazy worldview is that it's flat and simple, playing the same notes over and over again, going back to the same explanations for everything. The person who believes the government is out to get him will use that as an explanation for everything, so his world is really quite shallow and sorry, telling only one sad little story.

Reality is not like that. It is complex and grand.

G. K. Chesterton talked about how to avoid this fate, and how to help people suffering it. The answer isn't to reason with them in their dark little rooms in a corner of reality. That does no good; they just run around their little well-trodden circuits. The answer is to go outside, get some fresh air, experience some of grandeur and complexity of the broader world.

I have actually had this experience myself. I was raised a young earth creationist, and from an early age was taught that anyone who believed in evolution must be very stupid, as it was so transparently rediculous and there were so many absurdities to it. I never questioned the proposition -- in retrospect quite silly -- that so many people beleived something so obviously false.

When I was in college, I took it upon myself to study the topic at a college level. I studied young earth creationists and old earth creationists and intelligent design and theistic evolution and naturalistic evolution. I learned about paleontology and biology and geology and astrophysics and philosophy and who knows what else. My husband was pursuing a degree in mathematical biology, studying mechanisms for spontaneous speciation, so I had some help from him.

And while it didn't take long for me to discard my young earth background -- a week or so, as I remember -- I expected that with a little bit of further study I could find the correct view. How hard could it be for an evidential person willing to commit a couple of years to the problem?

But I found that the more I studied it, the deeper the rabbit hole went. There is some weird stuff in origins. I mean really weird. The ancient landscape is alien, the history is remote. Folks from several sides made arguments I found persuasive, and after about three years of study, I came to the conclusion that nobody had the whole story. I resolved to consider it an open problem.

The journey from my very simplistic viewpoint to the one in which I was overawed by the sheer complexity of reality was a long and difficult one, and I had to part with some cherished beliefs. That is a painful thing to do, especially when they're beliefs that tell you you're smarter than everyone who believes differently, and that's something that's important to you.

Since then, I have resolved to follow Chesterton's advice -- to seek out strange ideas and happenings, to have respect for the richness and complexity of the real world. "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That is my anthem. The world is a wonderous place, and I welcome experiences that further open my eyes to it, that challenge my simple beliefs.

Where am I going with this?

For all of that experience, I am a Christian, on what I think are solid evidential grounds. And in most contexts I am considered a smart person, though I don't know that I particularly stand out on Hacker News. But there is a group of folks I run into time and again, frequently on the internet, who find it confusing that someone like me could believe such things as that.

When I was in grad school, one of the other students asked me what I was studying. I replied that while my coursework consisted of mathematics, outside of that I was also seriously pursuing computer science and theology. When I mentioned theology, he laughed and said, "That shouldn't take long!" In point of fact, I considered it the most demanding of the three subjects.

This reaction is common coming from atheists of a certain type. It is the idea that Christian ideas are simple and nonsensical, that Christian scholars are humbugs or hoodwinked, their work clever in a sad way. That Christians in general are not very smart, for how can they believe what they do, given all the obvious absurdities?

With utmost respect to the folks who believe this, I find it sad, and it makes me think of my days as a creationist. The world is just not as simple as you think it is. Christianity -- let alone all of religion! -- is a grand and complex and multifaceted thing, and whether or not you believe in it, there are wonderous and amazing ideas therein. Even if it is false, you do yourself an intellectual disservice to hold such a simple concept of it.

I have had wonderful dialogues with atheists over the years, and while I think they're wrong, I have found their ideas enriching. I would not understand God as well as I do were they not continually harping upon the problem of evil and suffering and forcing me to think about it. I suspect atheists who talked with intelligent Christians would be similarly enriched -- if not convinced, exposed to ideas worth thinking about. If you think theology is simple and straightforward and unenlightening, you really do not know what you are missing.

I extend you two invitations.

One is a shot in the dark. There is a contemporary professional philosopher named Alvin Plantinga, and he is Catholic. Most folks who hold this view have no idea he exists (but you might -- that's why it's a shot in the dark). He is an engaging fellow, smart and interesting. And while I do not always find him persuasive, he makes good arguments. If you think there are no good philosophical arguments for Christianity or no smart and rational Christians, google him and read some of his work. His wikipedia entry is a good place to start, to whet your appetite. I promise, he ain't no C.S. Lewis. He will expose you to some novel and chewy Christian ideas.

The other invitation is personal. I'm not professionally trained in Christian apologetics, but I am a layman who likes to think and read, and someone who likes to air out the mind. Send me an email with your most interesting atheistic idea -- you know, some really meaty stumper, some obvious absurdity that it makes no sense for Christians to swallow. And in my turn, I promise to show you some ideas and events and people that you have absolutely no idea existed -- help to air out your mind a bit. I promise to be interesting and intelligent, to respect the rules of rational discourse, not to attempt to convert you, and to generally try to make sure you have a good time.

It is a sad thing to be trapped in a simplistic little idea when reality is such a grand place.


Here's a comment I made on LW about Plantinga sometime ago:

"I remember stumbling across Plantinga's modal argument and going "what?" For convenience of onlookers, here it is in a more digestible form.

Premise 1: Besides our world, there are other "logically possible" worlds.

Premise 2: Some cheeseburgers are totally awesome.

Premise 3: To be totally awesome, a cheeseburger has to exist in all possible worlds, because being "logically necessary" sounds like a totally awesome quality to have.

Conclusion: Therefore, if a totally awesome cheeseburger is possible at all (exists in one possible world), then it exists in all possible worlds, including ours.

(facepalm happens here)"


Well, ontological arguments are ancient and always seem like cheating. I am not a fan of them myself. But as I understand things, Plantinga's contribution is to formulate the ancient argument more rigorously. Even he does not claim the argument proves God exists -- only that it demonstrates God is either impossible or necessary. (Nor do I claim to agree with him on that point.) Particularly interestingly, the bit I presume you object to (though "facepalm" is admittedly a bit of an ambiguous criticism), that the possibility results in a necessity, is not the bit philosophers find objectionable.

If you wanted to really grapple with the argument as a means of growing your mind, not just satirize it without understanding what's going on, you should probably start with a more neutral summary of the state of things. Like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselms_argument#Plantinga.27s_...

Honestly, though, that's not the one I would have picked to pursue. I think that particular contribution of his is a minor thing, only interesting to professional philosophers in the first place. I had in mind something more major, like his notion of Warrented Belief. Or perhaps something amusing, like his evolutionary argument against naturalism.

But look, taking someone's weakest work, saying "Huh?", and satirizing it may feel good, but it's not a valid way to grow intellectually. Back when I was a creationist, if someone had said to me, "Look, you really ought to read The Demon-Haunted World -- even if you don't agree, it'll expose you to a totally new way of thinking about things," and instead of reading it, I went and found someone on a creationist website who made fun of some obscure little passage without really understanding it? I wouldn't gain anything by the experience.

Grapple with the original and the strongest form, or don't bother. Don't fool yourself.

[Edit: If you're looking for something meaty of Plantinga's to read, try this: http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/alspaper.htm . It's entertaining and friendly, and you'll probably learn something.]


I don't understand why you think I misunderstand Plantinga's argument. The facepalm refers to how it can be extended to demonstrate much more ridiculous statements than just the existence of God, therefore we can conclude it's wrong without worrying too much about which of the premises is faulty. If you think "the original and the strongest form" is supposed to work for God - increase our credence in the idea of God - but somehow fail to work for awesome cheeseburgers, then please enlighten me why. Because as far as I'm concerned, what I wrote was not a parody, but a completely valid cheese-o-logical proof using Axiom S5 and all these other things.


Oh, you're serious! I apologize for the critical response; I thought you were just making fun.

So, the ontological argument in its ancient form is very much vulnerable to the criticism you gave. When I encountered it in philosophy 101, it ran like roughly this:

(1) A being that exists is greater than a being that doesn't exist.

(2) Therefore, the greatest possible being, God himself, must exist.

We talked about it for a while, and then the prof rephrased it with "vacation spot", and we all laughed and moved on. It's a well-known critique, and it shows the argument must break down somewhere. We stopped there (as you did), but I think it's instructive to see why the argument doesn't work.

I came up with what I thought was the core problem: the argument doesn't prove what you think it does. It doesn't prove that God has to exist, only that your concept of him must include existence if it's to be coherent. For example, suppose I am at work fantasizing about the great boss I could have instead of the one I do have. For the idea to work, I must imagine that he really exists, and really works where I do, and is really in charge of my work. Those things are part of the concept. That doesn't mean they're true.

By contrast, when I imagine Mickey Mouse, I don't imagine that he really exists. "Is fiction" is one of the properties of the concept, and I'm okay with that. I don't need to imagine I can look him up in a phone book in order to enjoy stories about him.

So much for the logical.

There's a deeper problem with the argument, though, and it's this: I find it rather amusing that the philosopher thinks the best deity is well defined. I mean, has he ever tried, in practice, to define a best anything? When real people talk about real things, they often have a hard time agreeing on the best football team this year, or the best local chinese restaurant. The idea of a "best" or "greatest" something is incoherent in a vacuum. Best for what? Greatest in whose opinion?

Of course the philosopher might say, "No problem. The greatest possible being is the one everyone would agree is the greatest." I think it's rather optimistic of him to so blithely assume that's even logically impossible.

Imagine there was a sympathetic atheist out there. In his opinion, it's a very good thing that God doesn't exist, as his activity would make robust science so difficult -- and a world that has robust science is a much cooler than a world that has a deity. But he's sympathetic. He can see that people who believe in God often have better lives because of it. Some of those born again Christians really do turn things around, so the concept has to be good for something.

From his perspective, the best possible deity is a fictional one.

That rather explodes the argument, doesn't it?

Now, if you read Plantinga in the original (http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/plantinga.ht...), he gives a long and entertaining summary of the ontological argument throughout history, famous criticisms and objections and his own attempt at repairing it. I cannot claim to have fully wrestled with it (I'm going to be chewing on it all morning, likely -- I hadn't read it closely before, thinking ontological arguments were inherently uninteresting sophistry), but here is what I think I do understand:

The argument runs this way:

(Definition 1) Call a being maximally excellent in a given world W if, in W, it is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good. (Note that the omniscience thing implies existence).

(Definition 2) Call a being maximally great if it were maximally excellent in every possible world.

(Premise) There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is exemplified. That is, in some (maybe imaginary but nonetheless coherent) world, a maximally great being exists.

(Conclusion) A being that existed in every possible world would have to be logically necessary.

(Conclusion) Such a being exists.

How does this differ from the ontological argument of yore, and what do I make of it?

I don't think it's trying to accomplish the same things, and I don't think it suffers from the same criticisms.

At a high level, it has a premise -- and once you unpack it all the way, that premise is equivalent to saying God is logically necessary. It's a premise. You're free to reject it. Plantinga claims to accept it (!), but notes that not everyone does (a heck of an understatement). He doesn't seem to care: the object of the discussion isn't to establish that God exists. The article opens and closes stating that the argument will not change anyone's mind, and that the reason we're even talking about it is because the discussion teaches us some interesting things about how to do philosophy -- things like, what do we mean by "exist" and "necessary" and "possible".

What Plantinga does claim the argument shows is that such a being must be logically necessary or logically impossible. God (so defined) is either essential or incoherent. I agree.

It handles my metric objections pretty well -- there's no subjectiveness in the words, all the definitions are nailed down pretty well.

How does it do with cheeseburgers? Let's try it.

(Definition 1) Call a cheeseburger all-yummy in a world W if all beings in W who taste it consider it to be clearly the yummiest cheeseburger they've ever had.

(Definition 2) Call a cheeseburger maximally yummy if it is all-yummy in all possible worlds.

(Premise) There is a possible world in which maximal yumminess is exemplified. That is, in some (possibly imaginary but nonetheless coherent) world, a maximally yummy cheeseburger exists.

(Conclusion) A cheeseburger which is all-yummy in every possible world must be logically necessary.

(Conclusion) There is an all-yummy cheeseburger in this world.

Now, I would say the argument is similarly valid. It establishes that the concept of a maximally yummy cheeseburger is either logically necessary or else incoherent. But in the case of cheeseburgers, it's easy to argue that it's incoherent. Of all the possible people in all the possible worlds, surely we can find two with incompatible tastes. We could imagine one guy who likes cheeseburgers better the more cheese they have, and another guy who likes his cheeseburgers with the lightest hint of cheddar possible. No one cheeseburger could satisfy both of them. Hence we reject the premise, saying the concept is incoherent.

But it doesn't exactly work the same way with God. People have tried through the centuries to say the three omni-s result in an incoherent being, and the modern consensus is that they've failed. It is possible that such a being is coherent.

Is such a maximally great being coherent or impossible? Many folks throughout history have said impossible, and Plantinga has no quarrel with them (well, he does, but not here or at least not much). And some theologans, Plantinga included, have said the idea is coherent. You might think that, for example, if you found some sort of first cause argument to be persuasive.

Personally, I have no opinion on the matter. I have not heard an argument either way that I find persuasive (though I do think it's theologically unnecessary and practically unlikely). In any case, it's not the sort of thing I care for -- I prefer evidence to armchair philosophy.

That kind of brings me back to why I recommended Plantinga for reading, though. I don't recommend him because he's apologetically persuasive -- indeed, I recommend him because he's not. He talks about whether things are reasonable or unreasonable, whether it is rational to be a theist or irrational to be a naturalist, and what rational even means. He's interesting reading if you think (where this discussion started) that religion as a whole is transparently irrational. I'm not trying to convert you; I wouldn't recommend an apologist, as that's an ideological attack. I recommend Plantinga because I think you'll find him interesting and alien.


So bigots are surprised to find out that their ignorance-based beliefs don't always hold? :)


Ok, I think I know what happened here.

Overwhelming large number of HNers are atheists (according to recent polls), including me. But that alone should not be a reason to downvote a comment about religious beliefs, just because we don't agree with that (or any) religious beliefs.

My first impression from reading your comment was that your were portraying your religious beliefs as universal facts. Maybe my initial interpretation and reaction was wrong, but thats how I saw it. After reading your second comment and going back and reading the previous comment again I can see why you got the downvotes for expressing your (catholic) religious views.

I think it would have been better if you have said "According to catholic belief" instead of "We".

Anyways, nothing personal. As a former very religious Muslim, I can understand where you are coming from.


In context it seems very clear that he meant "We Catholics."


Is this a modern thing? Pope Pius IX is famous for anathematizing people who advocated the freedom of religious worship.


Anathematizing a person isn't the same thing as condemning a person to hell. Rather it is a form of excommunication (prohibition from receiving communion). The ultimate fate of the person in question is understood to be in God's hands.


To answer my own question, yes, it's a modern thing. Here's the original ritual of anathematizing:

"Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive (Name) himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."

Looks like this was changed to exclude the hell bit in 1917.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema#Catholic_Church


That quotation doesn't say exactly what you seem to be suggesting. After all, it specifically includes the hope "that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."


Hey, I never said Pius condemned anyone to hell for eternity. :)


Well, in Catholic theology that's the only thing that being condemned to hell can mean. :-)

Admittedly, the wording is very confusing for those not familiar with Catholic theology, but this quotation basically means "If X continues on his present course, he is in danger of damnation. We withdraw the Church's spiritual protection in this life in the hope that he will repent and be saved from damnation."

Is that helpful at all?


Of course you can't condemn anyone to hell because there is no such thing as hell.


Spoken like a man who has never made a Javascript webapp work in IE6.


Don't get angry. Get even.

Software patents are a political problem. They are a very live political problem. Lobby. You can change things. But not by getting mad here, but by lobbying your representatives in whatever parliaments, senates, councils, etc. that your representatives attend.

The experts in the field of software patents -- that's us -- know that they are an appalling bad way to attempt to manage IP claims in our industry. We know that they should not exist. They require nothing in their place. They are a completely inappropriate device in this industry.

We all need to communicate this fact to those that determine and influence the law in our respective countries -- although I suspect this will be determined in the US and the EU.

Start acting to kill software patents.


Individual action is good and all but if we really want to be effective we need to organize. We need a hacker's trade association that can raise money and lobby to protect our interests.


The EFF is the closest thing that exists to this, but I don't see a broad enough interest or financial backing to achieve any significant change to the current laws. Too bad there's not some way for hackers to leverage their superior knowledge of technology within the bounds of the law to swing things to their advantage, as businesses and in particular financial institutions have done for years.


I'm in the UK, but this issue is very much a European one relative to the UK, as most things are these days. Albeit that your average man-in-the-street Brit tries to ignore the EU, or simply blame it.

Here, we are quite well organized. There are open rights groups, including the aptly named http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

We are also responsible for Wikileaks, even if its figurehead is Australian.

I write personally to my MP (Member of UK Parliament) and my MEPs (Members of European Parliament), and they know who I am, which tends to indicate that they don't receive a mass or correspondence. In fact, even my previous MP knows me, and I've only been back in the UK for six months. So an individual can have direct influence. Don't believe for a second that you can't.

The system of government is not a large and impenetrable as the media would have you believe. The media struggle to gain access because of what they are, and they rarely seek to influence, despite the bluster. Voters moved to get involved often have knowledge and insight, politicians are not blind to the usefulness of these things.

Next week, the EU debates the ACTA and thereafter will vote on it. (This was announced today.) ACTA has a direct influence on this topic. With many others, I will be writing and lobbying for votes. It's also happens that an influential figure in the EU Commission will be in my neighbourhood and I am hoping to get some of her time to present what I think are broadly held views in the tech community.

So, definitely organise as a group if you can, but don't underestimate the power of the individual. Just make your feelings known. The results never cease to surprise me.


From what I've experienced hackers seem more adverse to organizing in a trade association than many other professions. Does this line up with others' experiences?

For those who think its correct: any idea on why? Is it due to the relatively new nature of the profession? Or maybe we're all more cocky than we should be. Maybe it just comes with the culture. I don't really know.


I think we're fine with organizations... IEEE, LOPSA, SAGE, USENIX, etc... I bet the average sysadmin is a member of more professional organizations than the average public school teacher.

The difference is that we use these organizations to make contacts, learn things, etc... basically to become better programmers or sysadmins, to find new mentors, co-workers, employees or employers. Teachers use their union to set wages.

I don't think you will find technical people using a union to set wages any time soon just 'cause we have little tolerance for incompetence (and because our market is efficient enough that good people, to some extent, get rewarded. maybe not as well as they should, but there is some correlation between skill and pay.)

Most of us are perfectly okay with seeing our less-competent peers getting left in the dust. Really, most of us prefer it that way. This is what the organizers will have to overcome if we are to unionise.


I don't know if we are more adverse than many other professions, seeing as I don't know many other professions that well.

But I do believe that the hacker mythos doesn't make us more likely to join organizations, since the architypical hacker is the lone, but determined and very skilled person. Exactly the person who would loose the most by creating a trade organization.


People have been complaining about the extensions of copyright law ever since the 1978 extensions. That hasn't slowed them down a bit. Congress is too beholden to big businesses who benefit from the laws. Though if this new set of patent trolls that have sprung up over the last several years keep going after bigger companies that may change, but I'm not holding out much hope.


Perhaps finding all the politicians' sites that use rollovers and pointing out how they are in violation of the patent might help.


it'd be cheaper for Novartis to just have these guys killed. Maybe after a dozen or so patent trolls end up dead, they might go looking for a safer market.

Frankly I think patent law, should be like trademark law. You can patent anything, but you can't sue anyone who is not your direct competitor.

Also it couldn't hurt, to have a clause that in order to be granted the patent, that you'd need to show a fully functional prototype.


>it'd be cheaper for Novartis to just have these guys killed

Let's HOPE companies don't start assassinating people....but if they do, they confine themselves to patent trolls.


Yeah, let's hope. Human life is important and all that. But just in case they do (which would be very unfortunate!), may they do so in a violent and spectacular way.

Not that I advocate it (really!) but if that's to happen, then at least this should have a clearly shown moral.


I realize this is all intended to be in jest, but I really don't think it is appropriate to joke about companies killing people. There's really nothing funny about it (especially because it is an event that could very well happen in real life -- and I'm sure it has, even if no one was caught). Business can be extremely competetive, and not everyone in the game has the same convictions that most people do. I just don't think it is appropriate to joke about -- my two cents.


There's a rule that says that any sentence will offend someone somewhere. But that does not mean those sentences should not be spoken, and I think that even in jest there is some wisdom in here.

If I had an insurance company and someone came to me for life insurance and was a patent troll I'd find a way to shoo them out the door without a policy.

I definitely see those that antagonize the most powerful companies on the planet in a head-on battle over these silly patents as riding a very fine line. No doubt people have gotten killed over these things in the past and it is not all bad to have a reminder flash up that your presence on this globe is 'optional' and that if you piss enough rich and very powerful people off you just might find yourself having an accident.

Those people that are already heavy criminals have no remorse about this, those that are not rely on the courts to do their thing. But what if the courts no longer function? No doubt a larger number of people will take matters in to their own hands, if only out of frustration or desperation.

That's one of the motivations that judges have to try to get things right, our whole legal fiction depends on the courts being perceived as 'working'. If that goes out the all bets are off.

Some science fiction writers have gone to some effort to depict the kind of world that would result from that.

There are no bad words, there are bad deeds.


We need to create the Bun-Bun AI and program it against patent trolls as well as telemarketers. And lets throw in spammers while we're at it.


If some open source advocate assassinated a patent troll I don't think it would reflect too well on the open source community.


It would be counter-producive.

Then again, harrassment, on the lines of what Anonymous did against ACS:Law, might help.


well Novartis isn't exactly known for being open source


No, it might actually redeem them in the eyes of some. But still, murder seems a little crude for want of a better word.

Remind me to stay on your good side ;)


Or how about having to show you've been trying to enforce your patent?

An unenforced patent is little more than a ticking time bomb. They sit there being unenforced for years. Until, one day, a different company buys them and sues half the world.


It may be cheaper if Novartis wins.

On the Complaint by Novartis against Webvention, http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2010/gov.uscour..., on page 7, Novartis asks for relief from the court.

If Novartis wins, then Webvention would have to pay Novartis for the costs incurred for this action, attorneys fees, and whatever the court deems fit.

Novartis could have just paid the $80k, but it seems that Novartis does not have an issue with their own attorneys working on this case, winning it (that's the key), and then getting compensated for their work and time by Webvention.

That is how I am interpreting it.


I like the trademark law suggestion. It would be nice balance for everyone.


I find it amusing and disturbing that you have a great many upvotes for this comment, but that it is ambiguous whether this support is in favor of reforming the law or killing the trolls.

Or possibly both.


Shame on you guys who upvoted that comment. I despise patent trolls as much as the next guy, but killing people is way worse.


Why don't we just abolish patents? The fashion and food industries seem to get by without them. I can see the argument to justify patents--rewarding people who innovate, but so often they are abused by the likes of Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures. Without patents, everything would essentially be a meritocracy. Either way, this is another example of how badly the patent system needs reform of some kind.

Here is an article that makes a better argument than I have the time or capacity for: http://mises.org/Community/wikis/economics/a-world-without-i...


> Why don't we just abolish patents? The fashion and food industries seem to get by without them.

There are several things wrong with your proposition.

First, the food and beverage industries get by without patents because they leverage trade secrets, which is the exact sort of privatized knowledge that patents have long sought to prevent.

Second, fashion survives without patents because names matter. People will buy Louis Vuitton whether it's good or not, simply because it has his name on it. Louis Vuitton has no need for patents because it's not the bag design, but his name that matters.

The problem with abolishing patents is that while it might make it easier for companies, it would make it absolutely impossible for small-time, independent inventors to advance human knowledge. What incentive is there for a couple guys to build a time machine in their garage when, as soon as they try to mass produce their invention, any number of larger companies better equipped to manufacture things at scale will just make their invention and sell it for less?

The problem with patents in this article isn't the patent itself, but the fact that it covers software, which is 50% math and 50% business process and shouldn't ever have been patentable in the first place.


"Second, fashion survives without patents because names matter. People will buy Louis Vuitton whether it's good or not, simply because it has his name on it. Louis Vuitton has no need for patents because it's not the bag design, but his name that matters."

How do you know this is cause and not effect? The adaptation of the system to not having government monopolies may have been to go to a name-based reputation system.

It certainly seems to me this would work for software, probably even better than it does for fashion. Arguably it already does.

" What incentive is there for a couple guys to build a time machine in their garage when, as soon as they try to mass produce their invention, any number of larger companies better equipped to manufacture things at scale will just make their invention and sell it for less?"

Yes, this is the standard argument. Do you have any evidence that it actually works that way? I don't see a lot of small companies making it big on a patented product where they get a lot of protection that works; I do see a lot of companies of all sizes being stomped on.

Goals aren't results. You've stated the goals of the system, but really, who cares what the goals are? What matters are the effects. The effects in reality do not seem to be a net positive for the "little guys", who can't afford the patent process in the first place, especially now that turnaround time is measured in years. In fact the horrible outcome you describe in a world without patents seems rather similar to what actually happens in this one.... the little guys won't be able to afford the lawyers, and everybody in the system knows it.


> It certainly seems to me this would work for software, probably even better than it does for fashion. Arguably it already does.

Yes, it would work better for software! I'm unsure why you and my other interlocutor considered this an interesting point to make: my post is clear that I believe software patents should be abolished, but not all patents.

> Yes, this is the standard argument. Do you have any evidence that it actually works that way?

Yes. The fact that innovation has marched on and that small-time inventors have invented new and relevant products is evidence for my claim.

> I don't see a lot of small companies making it big on a patented product where they get a lot of protection that works;

Sure you do. Segway is one. Many of the products by Dyson would be others.

> I do see a lot of companies of all sizes being stomped on.

Please, by all means, provide examples.

> The effects in reality do not seem to be a net positive for the "little guys", who can't afford the patent process in the first place

Tell that to James Dyson or Dean Kamen.


Isn't Segway protected by its uselessness rather than a patent?

Edit: if you believe that Segway's lack of success meant nothing, and that many companies want to build and sell self-balancing scooters but the patent system is stopping them, you should argue that point and downvote, not just downvote. I'm annoyed.


> I'm annoyed.

Rightfully so.

Downvotes aside, it seems the segway has it's dedicated fans.

I think the biggest thing that's wrong with it was the way it was launched, not the article per se.


DEKA is a strange duck. They have some genuinely brilliant people there, working on some genuinely revolutionary inventions -- but they just can't seem to actually bring them to market. Or, they're not interested in bringing them to market.

I've never seen one of their wheelchairs; I've seen some Segways, but they remain more a curiosity and spectacle than a common device; I've yet to hear of the Stirling engine / water purifier being deployed anywhere; and their cybernetics for amputees don't seem to be getting beyond experimental.

I really don't "get" them. The best I can figure is that everyone (influential) there is happy just to be working on these puzzles, and they don't really care if anyone uses them or not.


Honestly, I think you deserved your downvotes. The segway is clearly not useless; the market has shown that. Just because something isn't a runaway success doesn't mean it wasn't a success.


> The fact that innovation has marched on and that small-time inventors have invented new and relevant products is evidence for my claim.

The logic of that is not right.

The presence of both patents and innovations does not prove that innovation depends on patents. It only proves the sort-of negative: if both patents and innovation exists, then patents do not imply the absence of innovation -- i.e. patents do not completely destroy innovation.

Various other things help innovation happen. And I expect more detailed evidence shows them to be the important factors -- that is the gist of Boldrin and Levine's work, so that is probably a good source to pursue on the matter.


Louis Vutton's name _is_ a government monopoly, and they've sued everyone from Britney Spears to Darfur charities to protect it; they even boast about how aggressively they protect their IP on their website. http://www.louisvuitton.com/info/fake/index.html

Problem is that people buy Louis Vutton bags as a sign of conspicuous consumption whereas ACME's expensive and ingenious widget is a commodity, so government protection on the name alone would be insufficient.


I can think of a ton of ways to make money with a time machine that don't involve selling it.


Sure, you go back and file a bunch of patents



> Second, fashion survives without patents because names matter.

Have you heard "nobody got fired for buying from IBM"?

> What incentive is there for a couple guys to build a time machine in their garage when, as soon as they try to mass produce their invention, any number of larger companies better equipped to manufacture things at scale will just make their invention and sell it for less?

How does it change with patents? They produce and patent a prototype. "a large company" starts making their own copy. If the guys sue from their garage, the "large company" sends in their own lobbyists and 1k$/h lawyers - the garage guys lose.


"Van man 1, Microsoft 0"

  The Australian inventor whose company, Uniloc, 
  was awarded $US388 million 
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/van-man-1-m...


Oh... so this guy basically patented the evil method of associating registration code with specific hardware configuration. But he should have used it for good and sayd: "No Microsoft, I will not allow you to use this technology at all."

IMHO it would be a good idea to patent all evil business practices and then disallow companies to use them :)



The problem with abolishing patents is that while it might make it easier for companies, it would make it absolutely impossible for small-time, independent inventors to advance human knowledge.

It would make it easier for them, since there's no legally-privileged cartel locking them out.

What incentive is there for a couple guys to build a time machine in their garage when, as soon as they try to mass produce their invention, any number of larger companies better equipped to manufacture things at scale will just make their invention and sell it for less?

Because building things is fun, and because they get to use whatever they build. And because it takes time for the larger companies to copy them.

The problem with patents in this article isn't the patent itself, but the fact that it covers software, which is 50% math and 50% business process and shouldn't ever have been patentable in the first place.

Everything in life eventually boils down to math and/or thinking. What makes math special is how very clearly the fact of "standing on the shoulders of giants" is recognized, but this pattern applies just as well to everything else. What makes business process special is how clearly unjust it would be to tell people they can't use their own thoughts, but of course all other inventions are just as much people's thoughts.


The problem with abolishing patents is that while it might make it easier for companies, it would make it absolutely impossible for small-time, independent inventors to advance human knowledge. What incentive is there for a couple guys to build a time machine in their garage when, as soon as they try to mass produce their invention, any number of larger companies better equipped to manufacture things at scale will just make their invention and sell it for less?

It's much, much more complicated than that.

Some large companies are bureaucracy with poor incentive structures. So innovative tech passes by them. Their size also slow them down a lot even when they want to adopt the new tech. They cannot focus as intensively as a small corporation can.

Beside, not everybody will necessary see the usefulness of inventions. That where entrepreneurs come in. They risk their money, invent better marketing techniques, make it cheap and efficient, and so on. Inventors do important jobs, sure. But who will market the inventions and risk capitals and so on?

Makerbot Inc is making lot of money with open hardware while also doing some R&D to improve their products. They're making it big without patents. Arguably, patents would actually impedes the growth of small hacker enterprise like Makerbot Inc.

The problem with patents in this article isn't the patent itself, but the fact that it covers software, which is 50% math and 50% business process and shouldn't ever have been patentable in the first place.

Have you ever look at the history of patents and their economic consequences? Patents doesn't disclose secrets or whatever consequences you imagine. It shift technological research from secretive inventions to easily reverse engineered inventions, but doesn't increase them. They are more deadweight costs rather than incentive.

Patents are the problem. However, nobody ever brother to look into the history of patents, much less question their assumption.


If I had built a working time machine in my garage, I'm pretty sure mass production would not be my next step.


>Second, fashion survives without patents because names matter.

How does this not apply? How about AutoDesk, Apple, HP, Dell, Sony Vaio? All those names create a different and unique mental image and perception. The name matters just as much in software as in fashion. And are you actually referring to the movie Primer as evidence?


> How does this not apply? How about AutoDesk, Apple, HP, Dell, Sony Vaio? All those names create a different and unique mental image and perception. The name matters just as much in software as in fashion.

And in the world I propose where software patents don't exist, it would matter even more. But the GGP didn't talk about banning software patents, he talked about banning all patents. If you must respond, please try to respond to the actual thrust of my argument.

> And are you actually referring to the movie Primer as evidence?

I made an allusion to it in a fictional example to illustrate a point. You sound like you're itching to argue for some reason.


The problem with abolishing patents is that while it might make it easier for companies, it would make it absolutely impossible for small-time, independent inventors to advance human knowledge.

Pull the other one. It has a bell attached!


Take off the blinders for a second and keep in mind that your view of patent abuses is very much limited to that of the software realm.

Patents remain relevant and valuable in fields beyond software, where product development and basic R&D costs a hell of a lot more than it does in our little field.

I was trained as a mechanical engineer, and have some experience in that field - and I can say with great certainty that bringing even a simple mechanical contraption (or electrical, for that matter) to market is a lot more expensive than what we do. In fact, for the vast majority of software, the only substantial cost is salaries, and maaaaybe hosting. We don't deal with regulatory fees, testing so extensive as to cost tens of millions of dollars (if not more), and prototyping costs more substantial than a bunch of bits on a platter.


Innovators will innovate as much as artists will paint.

Innovation won't stop because of a lack of patents, you will just have to shift to increased secrecy during the development phase which will lead to the competition having to play catch-up.

I can see a world without patents move faster, not slower in terms of innovation.

edit: @binspace, that's pretty close :)


Patents were (sort of) good in the days when reverse engineering was hard, but those days are long gone. Today if you release just about any product, software or hardware, your competitors can tear it apart and easily see what it does. So patents are not necessary any more to prevent secrecy.


Patents never were about secrecy. Patents are published.

Trade secrets are about secrecy (hence the name ;) ), and with patents gone trade secrets would go up in value as a means of protecting business interests.


I believe your grandparent was suggesting that reverse-engineering was hard, therefore patents served a valuable purpose to the commons by providing a limited monopoly in exchange for publication.


So you say because costs are high they should get protection?


It's not a matter of "shoulds" - but rather one of cause and effect, incentives, and careful balance. The original concept of patents was borne out of traditional engineering fields, where the costs of bringing something to market is very high, but the costs of simply copying someone else's innovation is substantially lower.

This disincentivizes inventors and gives a large amount of market advantage to copycats, and when this balance reaches a point where inventors cannot reasonably expect to profit off of their inventions, innovation stops.

The problem here is that we've taken this concept and applied it willy-nilly to software without modification. Software is a field where experimentation, innovation, and even product production is fundamentally dirt cheap, perhaps hundreds, if not thousands of times cheaper than traditional engineering fields.

In this case, applying the system as-is has resulted in a gigantic power shift towards the patent-holder/inventor, where they can hold the market hostage, and the fact that you can iterate so quickly and cheaply means that, under current rules anyways, a solid day's work is probably patentable somehow. This is obviously bull, and needs to be fixed - but I'm not convinced removing patents globally (i.e., from all fields, not just software) is a good idea.

IMHO the concept of IP must exist, even for software, but we must also account for the fact that software is intrinsically insanely cheap to produce (compared to just about everything else in life), and that the amount of exclusivity, protection, or just plain definition of what is sufficiently innovative to be protected, must change.


Yes, that's the exact explanation patent trolls give, though in fact there's no real evidence on that being true.


> Patents remain relevant and valuable in fields beyond software, where product development and basic R&D costs a hell of a lot more than it does in our little field.

There's evidence that innovation increases without patents.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100421/1451179133.shtml http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_says_patents_hind... http://blog.mises.org/10217/yet-another-study-finds-patents-...

Patents are rent seeking agreements and have long since been outdated, if they ever made sense.

Basically, I think of patents in the same light as special interest groups. They promote the welfare of the few at the expense of the rest.


I can see the argument to justify patents--rewarding people who innovate...

It would be easier to see this argument if that is what actually occurred. I mean, I understand that argument, but it's been a bogus argument for a long time because it's not practiced and the people who say we need patents for that reason are not looking to actually execute on that.


That's why the next word is "but".


I know. I was attempting to add more specifics to why I think that argument is questionable, not to challenge your observations.


> Why don't we just abolish patents?

"Intellectual property" is one way of increasing the provisioning of "public goods":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

Which, in theory, are under-provisioned in a system where they can be easily copied once someone has invested the effort to produce them, leaving the creator under-compensated for their time and effort.

IP is inherently a compromise between producers and consumers. In the case of software patents, the balance has tipped too far towards the "producers", I think.

However, in the case of something like innovative pharmaceuticals, maybe the compromise isn't that bad right now. It takes years of work, and millions of dollars to bring a drug to market, and once it's on the market, you have to say exactly what's in it! No trade secrets, no obfuscated binaries, but the exact substance, which makes it relatively easy to go copy. You could make a case that there would be less invested in finding new drugs if they could immediately be copied the moment they were released.

In any case, there are no absolutes - it's a compromise, and one that needs to be carefully considered for different fields of endeavor, rather than apply blanket solutions like "eliminate patents".


A friend of mine is a patent lawyer. From what he told me the food industry is rife with patents.


No patents, no PARC. No PARC, well, would we have come up with the GUI, the laser printer, ethernet? Maybe so, but it's hard to argue against the merits of PARC, which existed solely because of the photocopying patent held by Xerox.


The fashion industry disagrees that they are getting along fine without them http://www.counterfeitchic.com/


I couldn't agree more.

In fact, in one of our products there is a specific feature that would be be extremely beneficial to our users. But we will likely never be able to implement it ... all because of such a troll that has gone after larger players in the space.


could you comment on the feature?


I don't want to go into too many details but there are 2 patents–and both involve (now) very obvious ecommerce features but specific to our industry. One relates to searching and another relates to automatic fulfillment of orders.


amazon one click?


Ah no. It's actually not a company that does anything legitimate. 100% pure, organic troll from what I understand.


Errr, Catholics do not believe they can condemn people to hell any more than they can send people to heaven. Not even the pope can do that :)


I assumed he meant "I wish I were religious and believed hell existed, so that I might be able to believe there will be a terrible punishment waiting for them for having committed these acts."


Patent trolls are not the problem, the problem are the laws and structures that makes it possible for them to exist. For a company it's perfectly fine to do whatever it takes to make money, it's up to society to prevent companies to do that.


The silver lining is that ridiculous situations like this -- which is no less than legalized extortion -- will increase the obviousness of the need to reform the patent system and end the ability to patent the obvious. It will happen. It is happening.


Don't hate the player, hate the game.


Someone PLEASE make a patent trolling incident database that would include cases like that one. Two purposes:

1) you will gather an enormous amount of trolling evidence which will come in handy when this issue will get more attention from government and the public

2) when the troll issues such notes en masse (which I think they do), it will be easier for the victims to connect and pool resources to invalidate the patent.


Thats actually a good idea. What would be the requirements? It might be an interesting weekend project for me!


You need stuff like patent numbers in question, the companies involved, industries, categories, links to relevant news stories and blog posts, etc. People should be able to submit what they know (you don't want to gather all this info yourself, apart from some initial pile so that the site does not look empty). The website should be easy to use for

1) bloggers/journalists finding out about stories about blatant trolling

2) victims to report their case and find other victims affected by it (automatic search by patent number, trolling company name, etc)

Note that victims will not look for your website in particular unless you're really popular. You have to create a lot of pages for each patent number, each company name, so that google picks them up and they come up on the first page when searching for patent number for example.

This is unfortunately too much for simply a weekend project. The technology is trivial but getting traction with such a website, bringing it to the attention of major blogs and news outlets is the main work to be done.


The obvious way to implement this project would be a wiki. I googled a little and found a specialized wiki that already has the beginnings of such a project:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_trolls

So those of you who really want to help the world could go there and participate.


An area for estimated economic damage in the incident reports (broken out by legal costs, code changes, abandoned projects, etc.) would help reporters and politicians find some jaw-dropping stats to quote.


As someone else pointed out, this site exists: http://endsoftpatents.org/

Does that cover your idea?


You'd also want to consider making a company ownership hierarchy. Most patent trolls work through a dizzying number of shell companies.


>>he technology is trivial but getting traction with such a website, bringing it to the attention of major blogs and news outlets is the main work to be done.

Like always! ;)

A more pressing question is: Is there any possible legal repercussions of building such a site. I live and host in the UK if that makes any difference.


It now also occurred to me that location of the victim and abuser is also important. City or state at least.


How about a vote-up mechanism to bring the most ridiculous patents to the top?


Don't use any rollover images in your project or you will certainly become a target of a patent infringement lawsuit.


Why not go the other way and make a point that the project violates every patent it lists?


Because the list itself would prove pre-existing knowledge of the patents being violated, which allows for damages awarded to be much greater than an unknown violation.



Thanks for the link, but key here is to track threats rather than lawsuits. A lot of threats are just settled and no one hears of them.


In Google:

site:news.ycombinator.com "patent troll"

Done. :)


(Posting from a throwaway account) These asshats threatened to sue the company I work for. We ended up removing the "offending" technology from our site because we were not going to pay their ridiculous licensing fee and we could not afford fighting them in court. I spent three days removing code that made our site easier to use. It was depressing.


I really wonder: do they have any power over people except for fear? What if you just say "go screw yourselves." And leave it at that? Would there be serious consequences?


Yes. They can sue. And if you just don't show up they can get a summary judgement against you. If you show up without a lawyer their lawyer can make you look unprepared. And if you show up WITH a lawyer then you have to pay a lot of money for the lawyer.


I did that to 'acacia', they took a walk when they found out that I could probably invalidate their patent. (and I probably really could, and would).

It's like the mafia, they like to pick on the weak, the slightly stronger they'll go after in court if they think they can win. But they're cowards at heart and they will avoid a confrontation if the other party might damage them.

And if the stakes are high enough and they've been successful in the past with their shakedown they'll sue big companies that are not going to be able to invalidate their patent directly (that's what's happening here, after all Novartis is not exactly a software development company, even though they have plenty of IT).

Think about all the parties you could sue if you had a patent on the hyperlink.


> I did that to 'acacia', they took a walk when they found out that I could probably invalidate their patent. (and I probably really could, and would).

I'd have looked up whoever else they were suing and maybe quietly passed along a tip about where to find prior art.


I did that a few times already.

I have a nice fat file for people that are in that position and that contact me.


I think the main problem is there are very few consequences for patent trolls.

I consider this a form of extortion that our legal system is not structured to prevent (it actually encourages it). Invalidating and banishing all software patents would be a start.


That's what pains me the most. Anyone with half a brain can see that these people provide nothing of value and should be laughed out of court and punished for wasting everyone's time, yet that will never happen and they will continue to clog up the system with their BS.



The system is designed by lawyers, and ultimately protects lawyers. This is no coincidence.


>>>According to Law.com, Webvention acquired the property from the great patent gobbler itself, Intellectual Ventures<<<

Why do I have this funny feeling that this is a front for intellectual ventures and lots of people are going to bought off?


Indeed, why would Intellectual Ventures sell some of its patents instead of doing the usual, that is using fronts to sue people.

In fact, this case seems suspicously similar to earlier case Intellectual Ventures shell vs. Kodak http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/0302518496.shtml

This way IV can continue claiming that they never sued anyone(themselves).



Calling all HN types in East Texas:

Make damn sure to show up for Jury Duty.


You'll never get selected. In most any lawsuit, if you have a three figure IQ, then chances are that one lawyer or the other doesn't want you on the jury.


In the i4i vs. Microsoft patent case, in that very district, the jury foreperson had 3 college degrees (one a graduate degree), a couple other jurors had math degrees, and one had a computer science degree. The judge had a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst before entering law school.


You'll never get selected. If you don't even show up.(1)

(1) I've been on the juries of 2 civil suits and one criminal trial so far, and was the foreman once. Want sanity in the justice system? Bring it.


My sole experience with jury duty -- during voir dire:

Prosecutor: Juror number six, slightly abstract analytical question.

Me: Intelligent answer.

Prosecutor: The prosecution thanks and excuses juror number six.

Uh huh. I'm gonna remember that if I see you do it to someone else next time.


Incorrect, product liability and patent law both sides want educated people to understand what the hell is happening.


> product liability and patent law both sides want educated people to understand what the hell is happening.

Not always - if one side looks evil, the other side's lawyers might want jurors who can't understand the technology and therefore will vote based on good-guy-versus-bad-guy. Happens a fair amount.


I think each lawyer gets only a limited number of juror challenges. So a smartie might still get through.


> Limited number of juror challenges

That's correct if we're talking about peremptory challenges. There's no cap on the right to ask the judge to disqualify a prospective juror for cause, e.g., if s/he is related to one of the parties, is friends with one of the lawyers, etc., or otherwise has the appearance of potential partiality.


The reason they want to do it in East Texas is because the patent infringement federal court in east Texas is one of a few that handles patent infringement cases very quickly. Most federal courts that handle patent infringement are very backed up and getting a verdict on a case could take years. Obviously Webvention does not want to get caught up in an expensive and long court battle. They make their money from the $80K fees not the court battles.


Most people on HN would never be allowed to sit in a jury -- they tend to filter the smart people out, as the lawyers can't really manipulate them (this isn't just kneejerk, try to show up for jury duty with a big book under your arm).


I'm always amused how the people who are easiest to manipulate think they are hard to manipulate.


I've sat on a jury... should I be worried? :)


A quote about the inventor (found here http://www.webventionllc.com/about_the_inventor):

"Dan Abelow is a prolific invetor and an expert on website usability, ease-of-use and assured user performance. He provides ongoing high-level consultation services to large corporations, and improves website usability, ensuring a competitive advantage for his clients."

But then look at Dan's website:

http://computing2.com/index.htm

It's hard for me to believe that someone who promotes himself as an expert on website usability would have such an awful website. Is he somehow just a front for this patent trolling, or maybe he just got lucky with one very valuable patent?


What IS sad is that he is not even using rollover images on the site! That's hilarious to me.


"Abelow's independent inventions emerged from conceiving a new self-determined, worldwide content, communications and operating environment for individuals, corporations and societies, for self-guided improvements in their quality of life."


He has incredibly flexible arms.


prolific invetor


Yet another example of a flawed patent system in need of reform.


If the patent really is 17 years old, one might be able to forgive the USPTO for letting this one get by, considering nothing like it existed at the time (Gopher was probably the closest thing). Now, on the other hand, I fully agree with you that the patent system is in need of very serious reform.


Hypercard?


Good old multimedia CDs too.


I'm not sure if those predated 1990. From what I can see, in the US multimedia CDs hit the US around 1991.


Well, Macromedia Director with Lingo (the software used to produce most of them) was released in '88. (Director is older, but had limited interactivity authoring capability before Lingo.) It definitely had image rollover effects when I was working with it in '89. CD drives may not have been ubiquitous at the time, but deployment via stacks of floppies was going on.


This patent is filed February 1990, issued October 1993 - wouldn't that make it expired? Or am I naive?


I guess this is the aspect I don't understand. With a lifetime of twenty years, most software patents (a lot of hardware patents for that matter) cover the entire viable commercial lifetime of the product.

In our brief experience of commercial software (what has it been? 40 years? Note: that's 2 patent terms) I can't think of very many software technologies that have lasted as a commercially viable product for 10 years let alone 20.

To my limited understanding of how patents work and how the software market works I would think a patent term in the range of 1-5 years would be a lot more reasonable. It would allow for the patent holder to gain a competitively advantageous foothold in the market (the point of having a patent) and it would destroy the incentive of inventors to sell their patents rather than creating business from them.

I'd be interested to hear from people with more knowledge of these subjects than me as to why this isn't the way software patents are maintained.


You are correct the larger of a 20 year protection from file date or 17 years from date of patent grant:

http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp#heading-5

For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, utility and plant patents are granted for a term which begins with the date of the grant and usually ends 20 years from the date you first applied for the patent subject to the payment of appropriate maintenance fees. Design patents last 14 years from the date you are granted the patent. No maintenance fees are required for design patents.

Note: Patents in force on June 8, 1995 and patents issued thereafter on applications filed prior to June 8, 1995 automatically have a term that is the greater of the twenty year term discussed above or seventeen years from the patent grant.


But there's a six-year statute of limitations - a patent owner can sue [EDIT: for damages] for pre-expiration infringement up to six years after the infringement. (There may be potential wrinkles in the analysis if the infringement was an on-going one.)

EDIT: What the patent owner can't do after expiration is get an injunction against further infringement.



Interesting quote from that comment: "A long, legal way to say this patent is public domain on 10/5/2010 and these guys are probably trying to snag a nickel before it goes out."

Meaning the patent troll is trying to turn a last minute buck on something that should have gone public domain last week. At least it sounds like there isn't much to fear from this particular troll in the future


I hope he is correct. This group smells like a bad cancer, though. I have a feeling we are going to hear from them until they are stopped.


This is very interesting; it's the first time I've heard of an IV patent actually being (almost) litigated. Here are a couple of relevant points:

- Running this patent as a separate company limits the potential downside for IV etc. Even if the legal system awarded legal costs to the winner of the suit, which it won't, and even if other companies countersued for tortious interference with business relationships, which they won't, the worst that can happen is that the patent corporation goes bankrupt and there's zero return to the investors.

- It isn't necessary for IV to have control of, or even an ownership stake in, the licensing corporation. They can sell the patent to a company run entirely by third-party investors for its expected licensing revenues, minus some return for the investors. If the payments for the purchase are spread out over a period of time, then IV could charge a higher nominal price by sharing in the risk that the patent won't pan out (and that the corporation will therefore go bankrupt as a result with some payments still unpaid).

- Webvention, to an even greater extent than IV itself, is immune to countersuits for infringements of other patents.

- There's nothing stopping IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc., from doing the same thing. If Unisys had done this over the LZW patent, they wouldn't have suffered the PR black eye that they did.


Why hasn't 4chan ever gone after patent trolls? Seems like an appropriate, worthy target for them. Actually, I guess I haven't heard anything about 4chan for a while, are they done with that kind of stuff?


As far as I can tell, the folks on 4chan are concerned about ACTA, but aren't really riled up about any specific cases of patent trolling. There aren't a lot of lulz involved.


4chan is always there. 4chan is never done. 4chan never forgets.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/todd-schmidt/1/834/759


It's ironic that the USPTO's own site technically violates this patent, unless they've paid the royalties. ;) http://www.uspto.gov/siteindex.jsp


"According to Law.com, Webvention acquired the property from the great patent gobbler itself, Intellectual Ventures."

Aha.


spawn of microsoft.


I'd like to put forward the idea that what the anti-(software)-patent lobby needs is more and better patent trolls.

Is it possible that the situation could get so bad that a couple of the big guns would swing behind patent reform?


how in hell such patent got issued? Were the patent authors the first to invent menus? Less than 20 years ago? Obviously not.

There is pretty easy solution - don't issue patents when there is previous art.

In addition - lets have the technical patent protection period to be shorter than 20 years. Say 5 or 10 years. That would allow the real inventor of menus ~40 years ago to enjoy the meaningful patent protection when it was making sense.


I'm kind of glad this happens to Novartis.

Our company (devartis) received an oposition from Novartis against our trademark registration solicitude in Argentina due to the similarity of the names. The funny thing is that they registered theirs in a different category and the similar part is the word "artis" (which is art in latin), and dictionary words can't be owned.

I wonder how many software companies have the word soft in their names.


Something of a tangent, but Intellectual Ventures (from whom these "patents" was purchased) was reviewed with gushing admiration in Superfreakonomics - all geniuses, all wonderful etc. According to the authors they have solutions for many of the worlds major problems (global warming, big hurricanes for example). Glad to hear developing ridiculous patents is a part of this!


Here: A method for aiding transportation by erect ambulation using lower appendages. You can not only sue most humans, but primates and meerkats as well.

Seriously, how on earth do such patents get granted? I fail to see the invention in this patent claim. Is the patent office confused by the obscure language?


Leave it to patent trolls to make you root for a pharmaceutical company.


Is there any way I can patent the process of patent trolling?



Evil exists in the world.

QED.




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