By Dennis Crouch
In a recent NYTimes op-ed, Chief Judge Randall Rader joined professors David Hricik and Colleen Chien in calling for judicial action in awarding attorney fees under Section 285 of the Patent Act as well as Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See “Make Patent Trolls Pay in Court.” The Op-Ed’s focus is on the problem of nuisance suits brought by patent licensing companies against a large number of entities – many of which include small companies.
In addition to being more aggressive in awarding attorney fees under the rules, the authors suggest particular factors that may lead to awards against patent trolls:
One sign of potential abuse is when a single patent holder sues hundreds or thousands of users of a technology (who know little about the patent) rather than those who make it — or when a patent holder sues a slew of companies with a demand for a quick settlement at a fraction of the cost of defense, or refuses to stop pursuing settlements from product users even after a court has ruled against the patentee.
Other indications of potential bullying include litigants who assert a patent claim when the rights to it have already been granted through license, or distort a patent claim far beyond its plain meaning and precedent for the apparent purpose of raising the legal costs of the defense.
One of the bases for the article is that the patent trolls face very low risk in filing lawsuits since they can’t be countersued for infringement (they don’t make anything) and, unlike a university, they typically have no ancillary reputation that can be tarnished by the suit. Moreover, the cost of discovery for trolls is typically very low and they typically work through contingency fee litigators. The result here is “trolls can afford to file patent-infringement lawsuits that have just a slim chance of success. When they lose a case, after all they are typically out little more than their own court-filing fees.”
It is often true that the marginal cost of filing a thirty first lawsuit on the same patent can be quite small – especially when the new defendant is using the invention in the same way that other defendants are using the invention. However, the Op-Ed fails to mention the great risk of preclusion associated with each lawsuit. Under the law, each and every defendant has the opportunity to fully challenge the patent before either a judge or jury and, if the patent is ever found invalid then that ruling will preclude the patentee from ever enforcing the same patent rights again against any party. Even apart from preclusion, the organization of a patent enforcement campaign is not a simple endeavor, but rather an expensive process that involves extensive analysis of potential patent rights, an exhaustive search for financial backing and litigation counsel, and a one-business-at-a-time analysis to ensure that the patentee has a reasonable basis to believe that any accused infringers actually is infringing. In a typical case, the would-be troll follows thousands of dead leads and failed negotiations before ever filing a single infringement lawsuit. The point here is one that every patent litigator understands – enforcing patents is an expensive proposition and the notion that a patentee only risks $350 to file a lawsuit is ridiculous. Now, we can debate whether all this expense is a waste of resources that should be avoided as a matter of public policy. On that point I will only note the reality that the rise of patent enforcement and patent licensing companies has revived the market for buying and selling of patents from small companies and individuals in a way that allows those entities to actually monetize their innovations.
All this is a bit of an aside because I agree completely that courts should exercise their discretion to deal harshly with litigation misconduct both through Rule 11 and Section 285.
How are district court judges expected to be confident enough to award fees and sanctions for purported frivolous cases when they know, more likely than not, their claim construction and/or summary judgment order will be reversed by a federal circuit divided amongst itself?
I typically get my breaking news from Hal Wegner, and have read the matter by the time the issue appears here.
That’s why my posts are so accurate.
But you are right, some of us do rely on Patently O for breaking news on big cases.
Thanks Ned.
Although it would have been more delicious if Malcolm would have supplied the link – for obvious reasons.
LOL.
train, what was the PTAB case. Link?
Two important 101 cases in the last 24 hours (PTAB and S. Ct.), and Pat-O is asleep at the switch!
Supreme Court decides Myriad.
link to supremecourt.gov
Don’t think that I don’t know how these people think. I can see right through Lemley and Stern.
I didn’t address cDNA which was out of laziness. But, their holding on DNA is actually just iron age thinking. They can’t say that cDNA is ineligible as it is new (unless as the SCOTUS says it there are no introns in the DNA.)
Iron age all the way…..but note I even picked out Funk Brothers. I knew they would cite that prominently.
This is what I posted —-
If had to bet, I’d say they are going to hold it ineligible. I think that anon’s analysis is basically right. They have gone into a something more mode and discount information such as in Funk brothers. They want something from the iron age–not the information age as counting as new.
So, they are going to say that what is isolated is just what is already there in the DNA and all the techniques to isolate it are old. The sequences are there in DNA. So, what have you got in iron age thinking? Nothing. You have something outside of the DNA that looks just like the DNA in its important parts and the parts that don’t are old. Ineligible. All the predictive power won’t count–information age. All the finding the sequence in the DNA won’t count–information.
Going to be ugly. That’s my predication. 6-3 decision.
You are correct that I did not provide a count – mea culpa.
But look at the legal rational… – I guess the Supremes understand exactly what I have been posting.
Hey Francis, Robert, Keeping It Real and Malcolm, get in line to ‘bow,’ no pushing and shoving.
LOL, wait, there will be no pushing and shoving, because all of those svckies are the same person.
Maybe that person will stop polluting the public and just stay in his room (happended before – for a few months after his Diehrbots will be destroyed Bilski miss.
Yup. Not hard to figure out they would come up with this. I missed that it was going to be unanimous, though, but note that you did not respond to my challenge for a count.
Iron age thinking….feel it. Live it.
“Held: A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring. Pp. 10–18.”
Who is your (English as a second language) Daddy?
More gloating and I-told-you-so’s to follow.
Much more.
Can you define “success” as an intrusion on the legal alienability of property?
You know, limit rights of a property by the “who” of ownership as opposed to the “what” of the property itself?
It would be a ‘neat’ trick in the crusade to denigrate patents…
Rader’s letter implies that patent holding companies both have very low litigation costs because they use contingent fee firms, and their claims have a slim chance of success. I was trying to say that contingent fee firms won’t take cases they can’t win, so Rader’s assumptions aren’t right.
The usual complaint about trolls is that their claims have a slim chance of success on the merits. If they go to trial and get a jury verdict and appeal to the Federal Circuit.
Lawyers who take cases on contingency care about their chances of getting money out of the case. Which, and this is the point I’m trying to make, is not always the same thing as the chance of success on the merits. You can have a very weak case on the merits, but a class of defendants who can’t afford to defend a lawsuit and have their execs tied up in depositions, and therefore a high chance of the only kind of “success” that matters to a contingency lawyer.
So, no, there’s nothing inherently contradictory about contingency lawyers being thrilled to take certain cases that have a “slim chance of success”.
@IANAE: not sure what point you are trying to make. I agree that a large settlement, whether from one defendant or from 100 defendants, would constitute success.
Rader’s letter implies that patent holding companies both have very low litigation costs because they use contingent fee firms, and their claims have a slim chance of success. I was trying to say that contingent fee firms won’t take cases they can’t win, so Rader’s assumptions aren’t right.
Note for example that Project Paperless has sent thousands of C&D letters, but has only ever filed one lawsuit. They avoid litigation altogether, so they don’t need to convince a law firm to take their case.
Thank you for a well thought out response. Patents are worthless if they can not be enforced yes some patents shouldn’t be granted and some people ask for settlements that are less than the cost of defending the patent so people don’t defend, but people deciding not to defend is an issue with those people and the patent office granting patents that should not be granted is an issue with the patent office. The possibility of countersuits should not be what keeps people from enforcing their rights. If the patent is valid it should be enforced. A small company with a patent for an item with a small market value probably won’t be able to defend its patent. But a company that buys up a lot of small market value patents can, thus more incentive to spend the money to solve problems with small market value (like diseases that only a few people get).
You’ve soiled another post.
contingent-fee firms won’t take cases with a “slim chance” of success.
Depends how you define “success”. Getting lots of defendants to settle and pay up without the expense of a trial sounds like success to me, at least as a contingency-fee firm would understand the concept.
Rader’s editorial also fails to recognize that contingent-fee firms won’t take cases with a “slim chance” of success.
Yeah, read Haliburton. The justification for “abstract” used in that case no longer applies. The use of the word abstract is nothing short of an unconstitutional grab of power by the judiciary.
J. Lourie destroyed his many years of service. He is now no better than the felons in prison.
Abstract is supposed to be a judicial exception applied as narrowly as possible. J. Lourie has written it into the statute. He is a criminal.
The concept of abstract as an exception makes sense if rightly applied. You don’t want to let people patent the concept of being frugal when applying any method, but the current use of abstract is so bloated as to be unrecognizable. It is clearly a grab of power by the judiciary that exceeds their authority.
J. Lourie should be impeached.
MM: “”every patent creates a job”
I believe what you meant to write is that every patent issued to a new entrepreneur creates at least one new job. That fact has never been refuted on this blog.
MM: “small businesses can’t compete without patents”
i think what you meant to say is that small businesses, particularly start ups, can’t prevent big corps from stealing their inventions, without patent protection. But of course you would have to actually care about small businesses and the jobs they create for this to even matter.
6: “Sounds like they preempt the abstract idea of using one button to scan and email directly.”
How would you ever know if that “idea” was pre-empted?
:: silence::
NWPA: (which the Lourie court has incorrectly determined is abstract rather than broad)
Night you have hit up on an important point. Scope is not a 101 issue but an issue of 112, 102, and 103. An inventor may think of an original concept and is allowed to patent as many applied embodiments of that concept as the prior art allows and that can fully enabled and described.
This is why I do not get Judge Louries reasoning that a process that can be applied on any computer is invalid under 101 as abstract.
All of which makes for poor blogging quality.
But Malcolm will only [shrug], stand by and continue in his ways.
C’est La Vie
What is kind of funny about you MM is that you couldn’t have picked a worst example. Saying that face recognition is old and been done is like saying that cancer research is old and has been done and that any patent that has anything to do with cancer should be rejected outright.
But, then you are handicapped by your willful ignorance, intellectually dishonesty, and –let’s face reality–lack of integrity and malice.
And, by the way, MM (the little-brained troll), think about just how ignorant you are. How to process the information in face recognition is the problem. How can we build a machine that can recognize faces is the problem. And, how does our brain and animal brains recognize things such as faces. That is another problem.
You see this how to process the information to perform a function is without question the greatest scientific problem being solved today. But, tiny brained trolls like you seem to think that you just instruct a magical computer brain and talk to it about how you feel something should be done it will magically get done. I guess that is fine until you wake up.
Your ignorance rises to the level of offense. Just like Lemley claiming computer programs have no structure. There is a clearly malice involved and darkened hearts. Bad actors.
And, my little troll king, MM, face recognition has been the subject of intense research now for 50 years. And, with some success, but not really any real success.
So, just think here we have a problem that is useful, would bring great wealth for providing a solution, and people with IQs of 170+ have been trying to solve the problem for 50 years. And, our little troll without a clue or integrity tells us that it is old and known and easy.
So, using 102, 103, and TSM makes no sense? OK, MM.
“Brain” : what part of the computer is the brain?
It’s old to recognize a face? Not well. And, in fact, face recognition is perhaps one of the great open problems of “information processing.”
It sounds like you have been watching Disney again with your description of the computer being a brain that you describe to it how to do things and it does them. That isn’t how it works. You have to write INSTRUCTIONS to tell the computer exactly what to do. Just think people figured out how to tell Judge Lourie’s (the man without a clue) calculator how to drive a car.
So, to sum up: face recognition is a great open problem and perhaps one of the most interesting problems not only information processing but in cognitive science. And, our little MM (the king of trolls) is telling us that it is old and done. OK. Sure. Please just tell your computer brain to get it done and I am sure it will.
Maybe the 3:25 admission of “Because like many patent attorneys who’ve been around the block, I’ve “monetized” really, really bad patents on behalf of “innovators” without great difficulty.”
is also a (gasp) 1ie.
LOL (perhaps on Malcolm’s world)
Malcolm,
Do you still think machines think?
NWPA The computer doesn’t do anything automatically. That is why all that software is inventive.
“All that software”? LOL. There’s no “software” in the claim. There’s just a description of some plainly obvious functionality for a POWERFUL COMPUTER BRAIN.
If you could write a program that would recognize a face in pictures
First, that’s old. Second, just about anybody could describe in the abstract (i.e., as recited in a typical computer-implemented junk claim) how such software would work. How do I know that? Because just about anybody with a modest proficiency in the English language can describe how they go about determining whether a picture includes a face or not. Third, the rest of our comment makes less sense than the first half. Stop wasting my time.
I haven’t looked at the patent. You slipped in “automatically” in there didn’t you? The computer doesn’t do anything automatically. That is why all that software is inventive.
Also, let’s have a reality check here for a moment. If you could write a program that would recognize a face in pictures (or even better pornography), then you would be very rich. The fact is that information processing methods to do this well have yet to be invented (and there is no powerful computer brain to turn to to invent it for us.)
The reality: the subject matter the claim is directed to is extremely difficult and if solved would be worth a great deal of money. But, perhaps their methods of solving the problem are not too inventive, but then don’t we have 102 and 103 for that? And a great test TSM that should be used?
Or, do you like the brandy in the hand and nah test better?
bja What in the world does [the fact that the Republican “base” includes millions of proud mouth-breathing science deniers] have to do with the patent law
I think it’s pretty obvious. As noted elsewhere, many of the same Republicans who embrace the patent system and claim to champion “innovation” in America are simultaneously the least informed about science and the most inclined to put an end to public science education (pretty sure you fall into this category based on some of your previous spewage). It’s standard double-speak, which Republicans excel at (see also the term “freedom”, which typically means “the freedom to discriminate against you because our ancient scrolls say it’s okay.”)
the Democrats and Republicans selling legislation to Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Google et a
Fixed for accuracy. Please try a little harder.
You write powerful computer brain when in fact you should write “incredibly simple but fast machine.”
LOL. Indeed, I recommend that the softie woftie patent prosecutors who file this junk on Apple’s behalf start using the term “incredibly simple but fast machine” instead of “computer”. It shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever on the silly playground where their pathetic “innovations” are conceived and prosecuted.
What’s really funny is that they limit the “technology” to “faces”. Why not use broader terms like “composition feature” and “color tones known to correspond to said composition feature”? That’s a rhetorical question. Everybody knows why they don’t do that, except possibly for the reetardo Examiners in the computer-implemented junk unit who rubber stamp at least some stuff this bad every week.
Who’s the alleged “inventor” of claim 1? Ah, yes, LOL, it took TWO guys to come up with this cr-p: Russell Reid and Nikhil Bhatt. You’re telling me that these two people have a good faith belief that they invented the idea of looking closer at something that might be a face, seeing if has skin tones, and then saying “huh, it’s a pretty good chance it is actually a face”? Or do they think that using an “incredibly simple and fast machine” to do that automatically is inventive?
This is very typical computer-implemented junk. Just how much Silliclown Valley “Look, mommy, I’m changing the world!” crack do you have to smoke to look someone in the eye and claim that you invented what appears in claim 1 and therefore deserve a patent?
Do you know the difference between a pending app and an issued patent?
Yes. Do you know how to read?
Alan, the first recording statute required the recording of assignments within 3 months. Justice Story had a field day with that one. As a result, Congress amended the statute to cut off BPF status if the assignment was not recorded.
Regardless, I think the proponents want to find out who owns the companies that actually own the patents, pierce the veil and all that. I would suggest that we are not going to go done that route.
Paul, I am not sure the Supreme Court would sanction awarding attorney fees to losing patent defendants solely because the plaintiff was an NPE. Access to the courts is a fundamental right.
Judges can toss cases that have no merit in fact.
other, this doesn’t sound right. How could NPEs have a sustainable licensing program without even contacting infringers?
McCracken, you might want to consider that Republicans took over the house for the first time in 40 some years in the mid 90’s. They were looking for payback for what Dems did to tricky Dick.
Read more into what?
No one has put any flesh on the intimation that something is not ‘kosher’ with David Hricik.
Without more, even the fact that he is a professor who is only clerking for a year is quite meaningless. I see nothing to spark ‘irony’ or any ‘endeavor as a patent-marking troll’ that posters have alluded to. I hardly think that ‘Facebook friends with Alun Palmer’ is even remotely scandalous or otherwise of interest in regards to this article.
I am just not seeing any ‘smoke.’ Not even a whisp.
Except he is not.
Did you miss his admission? He has done what he QQ’s about.
He might run around in tights, but that is as close to the Daredevil character that Malcolm will ever get to.
Anon, MM is like the Daredevil character – the attorney by day – who only represents innocent clients – and then vigilante at night.
You have to understand that David Hricik is a law professor who is only clerking for Rader for a year. I think that makes a difference.
For full disclosure, we are friends on Facebook. But then, so are Dennis Crouch and yours truly, so don’t read more into that than there really is.
I think you are right anon. And, it even goes deeper I think. Because what they try to do is act as if the computer is a person that has been given the method to perform. So, it is as if the method was given to a person for obviousness purposes.
Acting as if the computer has some innate ability to solve problems is what they use to try and negate Allapat.
And, then paradoxly they call the computer just an adding machine when they want to disparage the computer in general and all methods using a computer.
Pretty fancy little dance they have there.
The word you are looking for NWPA is anthropomorphication.
Machines do not – in fact – think. It’s a great word to clear away all of the dust kicking with the attempt to tie in the ‘mental steps’ ploy.
Notice the Ned Heller has never addressed this concept?
LOL – maybe it is a ‘platitude’ that he cannot ‘engage.’
But, then that is the irony MM. You write powerful computer brain when in fact you should write “incredibly simple but fast machine.”
There is no brain. That is what you have. Everything has to be build from scratch. The “computer” offers nothings but the ability to perform a few simple operations. Driving a car, detecting cancer, answering help lines all has to built up from nothing.
Testing….
link to petitions.whitehouse.gov
And so is your discredited philosophy.
Learn your history, so that you do not have to repeat it. Tear down your walls of ignorance.
Go d you’re old.
…kicks up some pretty dust?
Let’s see if he takes any action on these applications other than QQ’ing here.
(will not be holding my breath)
Do you know the difference between a pending app and an issued patent?
Price of oil in China?
What in the world does this have to do with the patent law and the Democrats selling legislation to Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Google et al.?
More unbelievable Apple junk:
U.S. Patent Application No. 20130129209
This is a method for detecting whether a digitized image is a digitized image of a face:
Try to believe that this was filed in good faith:
A program storage device, on which are stored instructions comprising instructions for causing a POWERFUL COMPUTER BRAIN to:
select a sample portion of an image that may depict a human face, comprising a plurality of pixels;
indicate a likelihood that the image does not depict a human face if the pixels in the sample portion are substantially neutral;
and indicate a likelihood that the image depicts a human face if the pixels in the sample portion correspond to skin tone colors.”
When companies are spending money to file and pursue claims this junky, it’s a good sign that our patent system is just a bloated corpse, washed ashore and waiting for the crabs and seagulls to take their lunch. Heckuva job.
Pure junk filed by Apple:
U.S. Patent Application No. 20130137462
“A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving a message and geographic location data from a device; processing the message to determine if the message is associated with geographic location data; and presenting the message in a graphical object having a graphical element indicating that the message is associated with the geographic location data, if the message is associated with the geographic location data; obtaining input to the graphical element; and presenting a map display with the geographic location of the device identified, in response to the input to the graphical element.”
Because nobody ever used a computer to send “geographic location data”, which is like completely different from image data, audio data, face data, birthday data, romance novel data, travel itinerary data, nearest restroom data, breaking news data, best Blu-Ray player sales data, weather data, Hollywood movie data, Polish movie data, or (perhaps the most difficult data of all) copyrighted Polish p0rn movie data.
Your counterarguments on preclusion and other factors are pretty weak, but the bigger problem is trying to identify bad actors while ignoring that the patent procurement process is deeply flawed. Examination is limited and really is not commensurate with the potential economic value of the presumption of validity. The PTO tries, but it’s dealing with a fundamental problem. Most patents are worthless, even if they are inventive, but there’s no way to know if a patent is valuable at the time of filing. How do you make sure the stuff that ends up being valuable is properly vetted without driving up the cost of every patent and creating a massive barrier for filing any applications at all and not protecting inventive activity? Seems to me we need to work on the presumption of validity more than trying to figure out who is acting in bad faith.
To each their own – both sides have their wackos.
Both sides are politicians – the ultimate in hypocrisy is to think that ‘your side’s’ wackos are any better than the other side’s wackos.
“to pretend to write and/or use software”
Oh, the dilemma of which shiny hat to wear. Does Malcolm wear the shiny hat that says “GREAT COMPUTER BRAIN” that implies that the ‘software’ is only pretend, or does he wear the shiny hat that implies the inventions are very much real and they actually DO facilitate the great taking of privacy….(by politicians, btw, from BOTH sides of the aisle)?
Decisions, decisions…
“Imagine that. People actually give up owning lots of shiny things because they are asked to do something repugnant. And then they try to do something to ‘make it right.’”
LOL – yes, Hypocrite, imagine that.
Imagine that rather than as you do – turn your brain into rot with the cognitive dissonance of staying in a field that you do not believe in, and trying to ‘make it right’ by burning down the system with your QQ’ing on various patent blogs.
Hold onto those thirty pieces of silver, even as the irony escapes you.
“It’s a real mystery why this elite cult”
Ah, the kernel of truth – Malcolm wants the patent world to be returned to its “golden age” when patents were the sport of kings, and ‘but for’ ruled the reason why patents were handed out. Back then it truly was an elite cult. Nowadays, most anyone has a shot at getting a patent.
How dare they.
Don’t they know that they need to be a genius? Or at least have a flash of genius?
/off sarcasm
And those bad actors include some of the leading academics at some of our finer Left institutions (can you say “Agency Capture?”
“The answer to each in turn is: Much to the chagrin to every thinking human involved with patents.”
LOL – Jane Fonda would be so proud of you.
6, the analogy with Wall Street is that the bad actors learned to exploit the system with greater effect and that lead to our financial crisis. NPEs have done the same thing. They have learned to sue many people and use the economies of these lawsuits to cause new problems. Some basic adjustments to the civil procedures would fix most of these problems.
” As has been pointed out elsewhere, what are all those NSA employees supposed to do? ”
I thought they sent in FBI agents and SWAT teams.
“This was an inevitable outcome of the so-called Patriot Act and the creation of the gigantic post-9/11 Security Theatre that achieves nothing *except* facilitate the invasion of privacy. ”
I kno rite?
What’s the percentage of winners amongst all the small companies and individuals that make a deal with trolls? And for every troll seed that makes money, perhaps hundreds of non-infringing companies are extorted.
Yes, DC, but ordinary people must learn to understand that being threatened by patent trolls is just a cost of doing business in this great country. The worst thing ever would be for some guy who could afford to buy or obtain a patent to fail to recoup the money he spent obtaining the patent. After all, that patent represents innovation and if we try to put any constraints on that guy’s ability to “monetize” his patent, why, we might as well all just go back to the stone age or move to communist China. So just think about this way: every time you get a threatening letter advising you to take a patent license or be sued in court, just pay the license and think of it as a donation towards future American innovation, or at least a donation towards a real nice vacation home for a deserving patent attorney.
his belief in the patent religion was total
More patents + more trolling of those patents = JOBS FOR EVERYONE (not to mention the totally cool progress in shampoo bottle designs).
It’s a real mystery why this elite cult has yet to be fully embraced by the masses. Perhaps the answer is more mass mailing of threatening letters.
“There were some technical reasons for that.”
Right. Just like the “technical reason” that nobody in the history of the world had ever purchased something with one motion before Amazon “invented” the concept.
Seriously though, it shouldn’t take something like this to blow the lid on intelligence matters.
This was an inevitable outcome of the so-called Patriot Act and the creation of the gigantic post-9/11 Security Theatre that achieves nothing *except* facilitate the invasion of privacy. As has been pointed out elsewhere, what are all those NSA employees supposed to do?
We have choices. We can, e.g., repair sewers, bridges and other infrastructures, build some trains, and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of average people. Or we can give up our privacy and pay some silly people in Virginia and DC to pretend to write and/or use software that analyzes everyone’s behavior and “identifies” the “likely terrorists”.
Hope he likes Hong Kong. Seriously though, it shouldn’t take something like this to blow the lid on intelligence matters. Why we would even have secret police able, at all, to spy on americans is absurd in the extreme.
“Farney’s defense of MPHJ’s behavior was wholehearted, and his belief in the patent religion was total.”
The patent religion. Lulz.
““Every patent lawyer in the country deals with engineers who tend to think that things aren’t patentable. But that isn’t the law. The first one to invent does get a patent.””
In other words, most modern engineers cannot imagine that we’d have such a hopelessly backward s ar se patent system as we do. Go figure.
““No one had a system where you did these things—where a scanner, a LAN, a PC, and the application software [were linked] with automatic or one-button scan,” said Farney. “There were some technical reasons for that.””
In other words, it wasn’t enabled.
“That’s why I encourage people to go to a lawyer.”
What they need to do is encourage them to go to their congressman.
link to cnn.com
Snowden is a former technical assistant for the CIA and has been working at the National Security Agency, the U.S. electronic intelligence service, for the past four years, the newspaper reported. He said he walked away from a six-figure job in Hawaii for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and has holed up in a hotel in Hong Kong in preparation for the expected fallout from his disclosures.
“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people
Imagine that. People actually give up owning lots of shiny things because they are asked to do something repugnant. And then they try to do something to “make it right.”
I wonder … if someone at one of these tr-ll patent firms had a piece of paper or a recording of a meeting where the tr-lls discussed their money-grubbing scheme, could that be used as evidence of “bad faith” in, say, a Vermont state court?
“If you said you hooked it up to the Internet, and in one button, you can scan and e-mail directly out—yes, you have violated the patent that we own,”
Sounds like they preempt the abstract idea of using one button to scan and email directly. For the love of go d, someone take them to court and get that sht invalidated.
NWPA, take a moment to look over what you wrote there. You seem to believe that what is really going on is trolls exploiting things that can easily be fixed, like the things you mentioned, but which have been problems for decades and have not been solved. You can’t cast blame on those kinds of problems and then throw your hands up and say that we shouldn’t blame the people exploiting them for exploiting them since those kinds of problems are obviously either not going to get fixed, or cannot be so simply fixed.
“I agree about the shell companies. But, then that is part of the general abuse our corporations permit people. This is not an isolated problem.”
Tell me NWPA, do you know why this hasn’t been solved long ago?
“Do they (patent holders, ANY patent holders), or do they not own valid property (until adjudicated otherwise)?
Is, or is not, property still fully alienable in this country?
Is, or is not, licensing negotiations (WITH the inherent possible threat of lawsuit) still a fully recognized, and legal right of property holders?”
The answer to each in turn is: Much to the chagrin to every thinking human involved with patents.
“And lastly, in the mindset of ‘free beer,’ ”
I’m not sure what outlandish “mindset” you are referring to or its characteristics.
“You are simply wrong in your protests here.”
I have never protested to have an “unregulated” market. How you have managed to delude yourself otherwise is impressive, as feats of insanity go.
It’s called property.
Oh noes! – What would Jane do?
As for the rest of your shiny hat rants…
/eyeroll