How much more evidence do we need that the US patent system is fundamentally broken? People have been using wireless mail since the days of carrier pigeons. In the past years it was discovered that there were descriptions of wireless email "prior art" documented in Norway that predate NTP's "invention" of it. The US patent office failed to find the documented prior art when it granted the patent troll company its wireless email patents. Hopefully that discovery helped defang NTP enough to render NTP's latest monetary settlements significantly smaller than the HALF BILLION dollars they extorted won from RIM.

Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Durandal1707 

Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.

Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.

And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Durandal1707 

Prediction: The guy pointing out the brokenness of the US patent system will not get piled on and excoriated in this thread.

Broken or not, it is good to see that those who steal other people's tech are finally brought to justice.

When Apple steals other people's patented technologies, they usually drag things through the courts before they finally settle.  It is good to see Apple manning up early in the game for a change.

It seems to me that there are two types of patent violations (or IP violations in general): one where the offending party sees something the protected party does and copies it and one where the "offending" party creates something that turns out to be covered by someone else's patent.  I believe it's the latter that that Carmack was complaining about in his famous quote.  I'm sure that happens all the time, and it speaks to the fact that oftentimes the bar for what should be able to be protected is too low.  That is, obvious "next steps" are patented by the one guy or one company moments ahead of dozens of others.

In other words, there is "stealing" and "patent infringement."  Without knowing the details of any particular case, it's not always obvious which it is. 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26 

 

 

Broken or not, it is good to see that those who steal other people's tech are finally brought to justice.

 

When Apple steals other people's patented technologies, they usually drag things through the courts before they finally settle.  It is good to see Apple manning up early in the game for a change.

If you want to assert that Apple stole technology from this patent troll company, you should state that outright and justify that assertion by explaining what this patent for wireless email is about. There is no way, no how that a patent for "wireless email" makes sense. It is ludicrous at face value. There is wireless data communication, and there are countless many applications that use wireless data communication in a way whereby the implementation of the application makes no consideration to the fact that the communication takes place over a wireless network. The very notion of "wireless email", as something that it patentable, is as preposterous as it could possibly be. The question that begs to be answered is why any court ever lent any support to this ridiculous patent. The article here does not reveal the amount of money that Apple paid, but hopefully it was no more than the amount that they estimated they would spend without settling out of court.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 

 

Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.

 

And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.

It confuses me that you implied that anyone would confuse the requirement for an implementation with protection via copyright.

I do not agree that requirement for an implementation is the answer, for several reasons. Most obviously, it is damned easy to implement wireless email. All you need is a device that has the capability for wireless communication, and that also runs an email application. Requiring an implementation would not solve anything. This frivolous patent trolling business will not stop until the courts get smarter. This patent should never have been awarded in the first place, and if it has ever been upheld by a court of law, it should not have been. The very idea of a patent for wireless email is preposterous, at face value. The only quasi-original idea that the person behind this patent had, was that if they filed this patent, it would probably be awarded and they could probably extort a lot of money from a lot of other companies. Beyond that, they had no original ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 

 

Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.

 

And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.

What??? What makes you think the patent system is broken?  The patent system isn't broken.  What is broken is the mentality of the computer industry.  Where do you all get off telling a patent owner that he or she is "a troll" for enforcing a patent.  A troll is someone that charges to cross a bridge that the troll doesn't own.  NTP bought and paid for the patents.  They aren't trolls.

Large U.S. corporations are to blame for the high cost of patent litigation.  Instead of paying inventors a reasonable price to license technology they are using, they hired an army of lawyers and tried to spend the patent owners into the ground.  Large corporations were quite successful at doing this until companies like NTP put up the money to take the case all the way through an appeals court.  The NTP patents have been delcared valid and infringed by a district court, a court of appeals, then again by a district court, and yet again by an appeals court.  Then the patents were reexamined and found valid at the patent office, and now they are back in court yet again.  CATCH A CLUE EVERYONE......the NTP patents are valid and infringed.  How many more tens of millions of dollars does NTP have to spend to prove it.

The inventor of the NTP patents offered the patents to RIM for 5 million and RIM scoffed at them and went out and paid lawyers at Jones Day 10 million dollars run the inventor into the ground.  RIM was above paying some small petty inventor for patented technology.  Shows how smart RIM is.  If RIM had paid 5 million for the patents, it would own the smartphone market right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 

 

Well, he's right that it's "fundamentally" broken, even though it isn't completely broken. The fix is to go back to requiring an implementation with a patent submission, which will cut down on the ability of leeches like NTP to morph the thousands of useless patents they buy into whatever they need them to mean. Further reforms, to completely eliminate patent troll like NTP and Intellectual Vultures, while a desirable goal, would be tricky to accomplish, but, if they can be hobbled to the point where trolling becomes unprofitable, that would take care of most of the problems.

 

And, no, just in case anyone is confused, requiring an implementation for a software patent is not the same as protecting it with copyright. The implementation isn't about the exact code, it's about a concrete instantiation that shows exactly what your "machine" does, and how it does it, precisely defining your patent. If you can't build this, you haven't invented anything, all you have is an idea.

What do you mean when you say, "the patent system is broken".  In what way is it broken?  Is it broken because it issued a patent on push email.  I think we can all agree that would be a stupid argument.  The patent system should definitely be encouraging innovation for things like push email.  Or do you think the patent system is broken because the NTP patents are invalid?  If you think that, please explain to me why you think they are invalid.  Have you read the claims of the patent?  Do you even know what the filing date of the patents are?  

Or do you just think that the only people that should be granted patents are big large corporations that own market share and are making and selling products.  If you think market leaders should be the ones to receive protection from the government, you should move to China.  That is exactly how it works in China.  Here in the United States, our patent system and patent laws are designed to protect the inventor.  We don't give a shit how big your company is or how powerful you are in the market.  If you want to sell the next invention, you need to be the first one to the patent office or pay the inventor that got there first.  Its a race, and if you don't like to compete, then don't sell innovative products.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaiser_soze 

 

If you want to assert that Apple stole technology from this patent troll company, you should state that outright and justify that assertion by explaining what this patent for wireless email is about. There is no way, no how that a patent for "wireless email" makes sense. It is ludicrous at face value. There is wireless data communication, and there are countless many applications that use wireless data communication in a way whereby the implementation of the application makes no consideration to the fact that the communication takes place over a wireless network. The very notion of "wireless email", as something that it patentable, is as preposterous as it could possibly be. The question that begs to be answered is why any court ever lent any support to this ridiculous patent. The article here does not reveal the amount of money that Apple paid, but hopefully it was no more than the amount that they estimated they would spend without settling out of court.

The patents relate to "push email" vs "pull".  Hopefully the settlement was for the value that customers place on "push" vs. "pull" email.  If the handset manufacturers don't want to pay for that value, they should just take out the "push" feature and go back to the old school email where you had to log into your email account and request your emails.  Everyone in this industry is so hipocritical. They act as though the patents cover a worthless feature, but when it comes down to it, they won't take the feature out of the products.  RIM lost a 600M dollar lawsuit in 2006.  Apple didn't release its iPhone until 2007.  Why did Apple put "push email" into its phones when it knew the patents were valid and enforceable. I'll tell you why......."push email" is a DAMN GOOD invention and no one would have any market share without it and the license to use this technology is worth BILLIONS.