Microsoft/Novell

[ted leslie]

I am submitting patents now, I know something about the system, and have
seen the pathetic things that have been patented, but in working with
the lawyers, i got my education.

First of all you can patent just about anything,
i think there is an example of a dog bone going in recently.

Patent just puts  a time stamp on you,  thats all, 
and it is only useful for a challenge,

99% of all patents are null and void, and probably most of MS , Novell
and IBMs are.
It's the cost to defend, or to, challenge them thats the killer.

Keep in mind, if you propose a "problem" to which your patent is the
sol'n, to a group of professionals in that area of the art,
if they are told the problem, and in say 6 hours, come up with the
sol'n, which is your patent, and you could do this twice, or 2 times out
of 5, or whatever, the patent would be null, as you can't patent
something that professionals in a small amount of time, solve.

USPTO isn't the problem, they can't expect to truely be experts on
everything, the problem is, its so dam costly to defend, and the system
just doesn't work right. Its slow, the patent attack can be in courts
for years, while your product suffers, etc. 

Another thing I learnt which was interesting is in the US, you don't
need to even register a patent to protect your shit.
If you have 100% proof you had this thing, say you actually manufactured
something you had the idea for (company A), and that proves you in fact
knew the technology at time X and someone else comes along (company B)
at time Y (1 year after time X) and officially submits a patent. Company
B can't challenge company A (at least not sucessfully) and company A can
actually file the patent that over rides company B's.

Personally, I want there to be a patent war, as it might take 3-4 years
for some of the first ones, but it will become apparent that most of the
stuff is just crap.

I very much support patents and software patents, you have to be one
dumb ass communist bastard not too, but they are given out to lightly
and used as such a nasty tool in business extortion.


-tl




On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 17:35 -0500, Mike Kallies wrote:
> On 11/7/06, Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> ...
> > And the best result would be that any suit that Microsoft launches will
> > prompt the USPTO to get their act together and be made to realize that it's
> > ridiculous to patent something like FAT, how to make a cursor by inverting
> > the image at a particular screen location, or one-click shopping (the Amazon
> > patent).
> 
> I've been wondering if the OEM copies of Windows which MS thrusts on
> everyone with their machines gives everyone rights to use just about
> any patented methods MS could think up.
> 
> I can use FAT through Windows.  The copyright and the patent aren't
> linked, so I should be able to use the FAT patent any way I want.
> 
> -Mike
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