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Saved by Alice
- IPS3c 9y agoPatent trolls only stifle real innovation.
- CalChris 9y agoClarified by Enfish. Enfish v Microsoft > The Supreme Court has suggested that claims “purport[ing] to improve the functioning of the computer itself,” or “improv[ing] an existing technological process” might not succumb to the abstract idea exception. http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/15-1244.Opinion.5-10-2016.1.PDF http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...
- lucb1e 9y agoSo... what is Alice?
- lisper 9y agoDid you not read the article? Alice is the name of a company, and also the abbreviated name of a court case (Alice v. CLS Bank) in which Alice, the company, was the plaintiff.
- kyberias 9y agoTo be fair, the linked page does not adequately explain what Alice is. To me it was clear that it was some important court case and they just want to call it "Alice". But I can understand why it might be hard to understand for some.
- loeg 9y agoThe first sentence of the article is: > In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled ... That introduces the context pretty early and clearly.
- jotux 9y agoAnd "Alice v. CLS Bank" is linked to an article that explains exactly what it is: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/bad-day-bad-patents-supreme-court-unanimously-strikes-down-abstract-software https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/bad-day-bad-patents-su...
- lisper 9y agoYou can't be serious. The very first words of the article are: "In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled that ..." That makes it clear that "Alice v. CLS Bank" is a court case, and Alice was the name of one of the litigants. That phrase is linked to another article, whose first sentence is: "In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank today." Anyone older than six who can't figure this out on their own should be ashamed of themselves.
- mikeash 9y agoI would think that "Alice" used by itself refers to the litigant of that name. The fact that it's used as a shorthand for the case itself is very much not obvious.
- lisper 9y agoIt is common practice to abbreviate the name of a case. For example, "Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka" is almost invariably referred to as "Brown vs Board of Education" or sometimes even just "Brown v. Board". "Dred Scott v. Sanford" is invariable referred to simply as "Dred Scott". "Obergefell vs Hodges" is usually referred to simply as "Obergefell." This is particularly true when the context makes the shorter reference unambiguous.
- mikeash 9y agoThat's fine if you're familiar with that convention, but if you're not then I wouldn't expect you to understand it straight off. I see nothing wrong with the article abbreviating it in this way, but your ridiculously condescending comment is way out of line.
- quickthrower 9y agoSix? Really? I must have been a dumb kid by that bar.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- D-Coder 9y agoSome of us (where "us"="me") come to the HN comments first, because they load very quickly and can help us decide whether to read the article at all. Especially since many of the headlines are pretty opaque due to reuse of ordinary words in computing contexts.
- Max_Mustermann 9y agothat's your prerogative, but why pollute the comments on the article with such questions?
- lisper 9y agoYou are of course free to approach HN any way you want. But if you choose not to read the article and end up asking a stupid question as a result you should not be surprised when you get called out for asking a stupid question. The signal to noise ratio here is extraordinarily high in no small measure because people are expected to do their homework. You may not realize it, but I'm doing you and lucb1e a favor by telling you this. Many people will just quietly write you off as a hopeless dweeb if you expose your laziness in this way. Some people go their whole lives wondering why no one takes them seriously because no one ever gave them a dope slap.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoThis whole boring thread could be avoided by providing a tiny bit of context in the title.
- lisper 9y agoOr by reading the article. Good grief, what's the matter with kids today?
- mixmastamyk 9y agoTitle comes before reading. How's that workin' for you, the acting like an ass part?
- lucb1e 9y agoI read the page. Somehow I didn't make the connection that Alice must be a company name (it could have been a person's name, though a first name is weird indeed). Still doesn't give me any context though.
- CalChris 9y agoThere are three important and recent US Federal Court decisions relating to software patents. Alice [1] and Bilski [2] strongly limit business method patents as falling under the abstract idea exception [4]. Enfish [3] goes the other way and protects software patent claims relating to the functioning of computers themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp., [4] https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html
- pcl 9y agoGood question -- the article talks about the case, but doesn't say much about the company. A cursory look at their website makes it appear that Alice Corp. is probably a non-practicing entity (aka patent troll) in the financial services space. Does anyone know if they actually have a business aside from licensing their patent portfolio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern... http://www.alicecorp.com/fs_patents.html http://www.alicecorp.com/fs_patents.html
- nailer 9y agoThere's a link, but you're right it's way too subtle. Anyway: > Alice Corp.'s patent claimed a form of escrowing that was well known. Called an “intermediated settlement,” it allowed a third party to act as an intermediary by creating “shadow accounts” for parties, and only allowing transactions to go through if the “shadow account” showed the party had enough money. Oh—and it was done with a computer.
- throwawaykf09 9y ago> Alice Corp.'s patent claimed a form of escrowing that was well known. Somebody told me that it was not really well known when the patent was filed. Apparently keeping shadow accounts was not really feasible without computers and networks, so such methods did not exist previously. I'm not sure how accurate that is, though. I'm not knowledgeable about that domain.
- heisenbit 9y agoMore important than innovation is often execution. Protecting shallow innovation at the cost of hampering maybe less innovative but well executed small businesses is not serving the common good.
- makecheck 9y agoI can see two rules that would help immensely with trolls: 1. There should be an absolute maximum on the litigation that can be brought against any organization for any reason in a given time period (say, a year), and that total cost should not be able to exceed some tiny fraction of its total operating costs for that period (parent companies included, to avoid hiding actual illegal activities in subsidiaries). In other words, it should be impossible for someone to kill a startup “in the crib” simply by creating overwhelming lawsuits that are too expensive in time and money to deal with. 2. There should be a very substantial penalty for failing to convict after accusing a someone of a patent violation; something like 10x the legal costs of the party that was accused, and a moratorium on any similar accusations against any party for some period (like 6 months). In other words, slow these trolls down and hit them hard when they fail, and they might not try to make a shady business out of it.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoThe first rule is too easily exploitable. Defensively engage in litigation between a pair of complicit entities that consumes the entire litigation budget, and then go around screwing everyone you can over while going "nah nah nah, you can't sue me"
- saagarjha 9y agoOf course with absolute legislation like this you're going to end up with someone abusing the rules. Already been sued too many times this year (as any large company is)? Congratulations, you're now immune to lawsuits.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoPlus: "Hey, Steve, buddy - I'll pay you the cost of losing if you sue us for infringement - we're one law-suit away from being invincible."
- pavel_lishin 9y agoIf I can only ever be sued for a pittance, why would I ever fear lawsuits?
- ATsch 9y agoThis is meta, but I it would be awesome they'd add a slight margin to the text on mobile, it's very difficult to read if the text starts on the border of the page.
- ljf 9y agoOn my white phone it looks bad, but on my black phone it works - I wonder what the dev had? ;)
- jfaucett 9y agoWhy not just make all patents illegal? Then just let companies mitigate the risks of IP infringement through the purchase of insurance. The insurer could offer various policies some that compensate for all losses due to infringment and/or also going after perpetrators, etc. This seems like a more optimal solution to me than the current lot of legislation and trolling, I think it would maximize rate of innovation while also allowing companies to invest and have safeguards against IP theft.
- inimino 9y agoI don't get it. What would it mean to "go after perpetrators" if there's no longer any such thing as a patent?
- cyphar 9y agoI've always found the culture around software patents incredibly toxic. Very rarely are patents used as means to fund future work (which is their entire intention) and far more often they are used as an extortion tactic (even by non-trolls). And even if they were being used "correctly", software development is still poorer as an industry because of them. As they say, Stallman was right all along. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html
- 168 9y agoDoes anyone know what exactly Stallman means by 'functional part'? I would have assumed it to mean something like one feature, or perhaps one procedure, but that does not quite add up with his examples having two to three times as many 'functional parts' as they have lines of code.
- cyphar 9y agoIf you read the paragraph that referenced it, it appears he's referring to constructs like 'if' statements and 'while' loops. In particular, he was contrasting the difference between mechanical engineering and software engineering: > If I wanted to put an ‘If’ statement in a ‘While’ statement, I don't have to worry about whether the ‘If’ statement will oscillate at a certain frequency and rub against the ‘While’ statement and eventually they will fracture. I don't have to worry whether it will oscillate at a certain higher frequency and induce a signal in the value of some other variable. [...]