On 26/07/2011 18:57, Paul Martz wrote:
On 7/26/2011 8:44 AM, Jeremy Moles wrote:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
For those of you who live in the US, this was a great, GREAT episode of
"This American Life" on NPR last weekend. It talks about how absolutely
insane the patent system is in the US. It's so absurd and depressing I
honestly want to stop being a programmer and become an IP lawyer just so
I can fight these guys.
I wonder... how long will it be before these "extortionists" worm their
way out of the mobile software market and into the games and
system-level world? We avoid some of the heat now just because we aren't
on the radar, but it won't be long before someone is awarded a patent
for "A System And Method For Dynamically Colorizing Triangular Regions
In Multidimensional Space" and we're all having to pay royalties...
There's already prior art for that. In the Sperry-Rand versus Honeywell
trial in the early 1970s, Honeywell successfully invalidated
Sperry-Rand's patent for refreshable memory by demonstrating that such a
device had already been invented by John Atanasoff.
For the history of Atanasoff's computer (which predates the ENIAC), and
a quick overview of the trial:
Book: _The Man Who Invented the Computer_
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Computer-Biography/dp/0385527136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311698749&sr=1-1
The story of the intermittent windshield wiper is also pertinent:
Movie: _Flash of Genius_
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Flash_of_Genius/70098902?trkid=2361637
thanks for the links.
Another free one I liked:
http://patentabsurdity.com/
I'm not in the US, but these things are heading our way too :(
jp
And it wouldn't matter that the patent would be absolute crap; unless
you have the millions required to fight it in court, you're screwed.
Prior art or otherwise. It isn't about who is right or wrong it seems,
but rather, who has more money to litigate.
Totally agree. The Sperry-Rand v Honeywell trial lasted years and had, I
think, some 20,000 individual pieces of evidence submitted. And the
windshield wiper trial pretty much ruined the plaintiff. Unless you can
find a lawyer to represent you pro bono, you're screwed.
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