Patents Roundup: ACTA Xenophobia, Motorola Wants Embargo with Patents
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-01-24 12:37:23 UTC
- Modified: 2010-01-24 12:37:23 UTC
Summary: Patent news of interest
●
Activist ejected from 'public' meeting on secret copyright treaty for tweeting
The latest round of negotiations over the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA -- a secret treaty that contains provisions requiring nations to wiretap the Internet, force ISPs to spy on users, search laptops at the border, and disconnect whole households from the net on the basis of mere accusation of copyright infringement) is just kicking off in Mexico, and activists from around Mexico and the world have converged on the meeting to demand transparent, public negotiations of this critical treaty.
●
'Public' Consultation Over ACTA In Mexico Almost Required NDAs, Blogger Removed For Tweeting
The room, then, was mostly industry people, who were apparently concerned as to why everyday citizens were in attendance, and they even booed a lawyer who questioned the human rights angle. As for Geraldine, she tried twittering the event, and the industry folks demanded she leave (and had a guard escort her out). It's almost like they're trying to make themselves into a caricature of businesses plotting to harm the public.
●
Motorola asks ITC to ban BlackBerry imports
Patent litigation between Motorola and Research In Motion is heating up, with Motorola filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission.
In the complaint, filed Friday, Motorola alleges that RIM engages in unfair trade practices by importing and selling products that infringe five Motorola patents. The patents cover technologies related to Wi-Fi access, application management, user interface and power management, Motorola said.
●
Motorola Asks ITC To Ban BlackBerry Imports
●
Motorola files case against Blackberry owners, RIM
Motorola has asked US regulators to ban Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm behind the Blackberry, from importing its products into the US.
●
Beltway Issues Poised to Hurt Digital Innovators
Patent reform - Patent trolls are reshaping the patent landscape; their litigation of broad, vague software patents is amounting to a "tax" on innovation.
●
Petition to Stop Software Patents in Europe
The petition aims to unify the voices of concerned Europeans, associations and companies, and calls on our politicians in Europe to stop patents on software with legislative clarifications.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
- Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
-
- FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
- We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
- Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
- Links for the day
- Windows in Times of Conflict
- In pictures
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024
- Gemini Links 15/05/2024: 50 Years of Text Games
- Links for the day
- Ebury is Not "Linux", That's Just the Media Shifting Attention (Microsoft in the Hot Seat for Total Breach Right Now)
- Seems like it may be a Trojan
- Links 15/05/2024: Growing Tensions Between East and West, Anticlimax in Chatbot Space
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Talk 'Delayed'
- "Repousé à une date ultérieur. Du au congé, il n'était pas possible de l'organiser bien dans le temps disponible."
- Links 15/05/2024: Toll on Climate Change, Physical Assaults on Politicians
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Free Society Requires Free Press
- The Assange decision is now less than a week away (after several delays and demand for shallow 'assurances')
- CyberShow Goes "Live"
- The CyberShow has a similar worldview (on technology and ethics) to ours
- Latest Status of Site Archives (Static Pages)
- article listings are reaching a near-final form
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 14, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, May 14, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Today's Talk by Richard Stallman Going Ahead as Planned
- That talk will be in French
- At This Pace (and Rate) It Won't Take Long for Android to Unseat Windows in Russia
- Operating System Market Share Russian Federation
- [Video] The High Cost of High-Level Tools and High-Level Programming Languages
- Windows and Microsoft-style teaching remain a barrier to simple programming
- Linux and Linux Foundation Leftovers
- Some more Linux news
- Africa is Still Android
- Operating System Market Share Africa: May 2024
- Windows Falls to 10% in Uganda, It Was 94% in 2010
- Microsoft fell from market dominance to (soon) single digit (percent-wise).
- Grouping Our Archives by Week
- No more 'numbers lottery', the clustering is based on dates
- [Video] LinuxFest Northwest is Letting GAFAM Take Over (and Why It's Hard to Resist)
- Microsoft and LinuxFest Northwest
- Links 14/05/2024: Bounties on Terrible Patents, China Censors Dissidents Internationally via Attack Dogs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/05/2024: Server Failure Swallows rawtext.club
- Links for the day
- Links 14/05/2024: SoftBank and ARM Chasing Hype, "Why Are You Working?"
- Links for the day
- Links 14/05/2024: Microsoft Edelman Works for Climate Change Deniers, NATO Draws a Cyber Red Line in Tensions With Russia
- Links for the day
- Feasibility of Self-Hosting is About More Than Speeds
- Speed helps, but the Internet (Net) is a global, interconnected system that no single person or company or government fully controls
- EPO: Language of Conflict
- A letter about this has already been sent
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 13, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, May 13, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Watching Our Videos Before We Write Articles for Them
- It has long been possible
- Microsoft is Measured at Lower Than Apple in Niger (Of Course Android Dominates)
- Niger's OS share (as measured by Web sites) is subjected to significant fluctuations because it's not highly connected
- Refuting the Ludicrous, Laughable Idea I Don't (or Cannot) Code
- I've written code for 30 years
- [Meme] "Talk is Cheap. Show Me the Code." - Linus Torvalds
- be like Chad
- Windows in Chad: Going Extinct
- From 100% to 1%?
- Doing the Site From Home (What I Always Wanted to Do)
- Even some of the hosting was done from home (since 2020)
Comments
Jose_X
2010-01-25 05:16:29
Subj: Patent system useful to slow fast progress -- quick, export our laws!
If enough more people understood how vague and broad most patents are and how much damage some of these patents do to progress, there would be a quick overhaul of the US patent system.
The larger company has the leverage over the smaller company because they have much more money and many more incentives to file vague patents faster so as to overload and stop new and smaller competitors. Ironically, the small company that doesn't produce any products at all has the ultimate leverage because their products don't exist so they can't be stopped.
Patents should only be allowed in industries that have very few competitors (boring industries). Otherwise, each 20 year patent monopoly aggregates in large numbers to stifle the heck out of the industry. No one is fast enough or wealthy enough to write down all their ideas and file expensive patent applications for each one before other competitors grab most of these and other ideas.
Other dirty laundry of the patent system include: (a) frequently, ideas patented have not only occurred to many people before, but are accepted as behinds the scenes standard practice; (b) sometimes ideas get "rediscovered" decades later; (c) the bar for patentability, being "novel and nonobvious", is mockingly low -- if you had to think about the idea for more than a few weeks or sometimes for more than a few minutes, it's "nonobvious"; (d) the monopoly period of 20 years of preventing others from using the invention is an insult to humanity -- most human's lifespan means they aren't even that productive for much more than 20 years; (e) some inventions are remarkably cheap to manufacture, modify, distribute, etc, and are even interesting and fun to invent -- these absolutely need no monopoly incentive whatsoever and monopolies most definitely stifle advance; (f) there is a fundamental disconnection between what really promote progress, collaboration, and a monopoly grant, defined to suppress collaboration completely; (g) monopolists, having no competition, tend to get very lazy and misuse resources for a full 20 year period; (h) inventors that were working on the same inventions and theories for years have their work go down the drain if they didn't file many patents and someone else later did; (i) almost any successful product can be stopped from many future improvements by a series of hostile patent filings by competitors; (j) supposedly "open" standards can be patented, so that in order to participate in the market place, you necessarily have to infringe on patents; (k) the cost of patents means it's a club for the wealthy, and major existing patent players actually want to make it even more expensive so that they have much less competition from other patent filers; (l) you can patent something that you have little clue of how it actually works -- this is a failure in the whole concept of the patent system since it allows those with broad general ideas to stop those with specific ideas and detailed knowledge; (m) ....
We all lose with our current patent system, and the more competitive the industry (like software and business methods), the more damage patents do to it. On the other hand, the US wants to spread our foolish patent laws to other countries. This means everyone else will also be as handicapped as us, so we will be able to compete a little bit better against them. This partly makes up for the fact we will have a lot fewer interesting inventions and will need to get permission and pay a fee to some "Einstein" in order to do a lot more things.