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Rollover image on your website? That will be $80,000 (please)
- dstein 16y agoI think the main problem is there are very few consequences for patent trolls. I consider this a form of extortion that our legal system is not structured to prevent (it actually encourages it). Invalidating and banishing all software patents would be a start.
- jRoden 16y agoThat's what pains me the most. Anyone with half a brain can see that these people provide nothing of value and should be laughed out of court and punished for wasting everyone's time, yet that will never happen and they will continue to clog up the system with their BS.
- mhb 16y ago"Loser pays" would help. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792353 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1792353
- megablast 16y agoThe system is designed by lawyers, and ultimately protects lawyers. This is no coincidence.
- noonespecial 16y agoCalling all HN types in East Texas: Make damn sure to show up for Jury Duty.
- dfranke 16y agoYou'll never get selected. In most any lawsuit, if you have a three figure IQ, then chances are that one lawyer or the other doesn't want you on the jury.
- noonespecial 16y agoYou'll never get selected. If you don't even show up.(1) (1) I've been on the juries of 2 civil suits and one criminal trial so far, and was the foreman once. Want sanity in the justice system? Bring it.
- jonhendry 16y agoI think each lawyer gets only a limited number of juror challenges. So a smartie might still get through.
- dctoedt 16y ago> Limited number of juror challenges That's correct if we're talking about peremptory challenges. There's no cap on the right to ask the judge to disqualify a prospective juror for cause, e.g., if s/he is related to one of the parties, is friends with one of the lawyers, etc., or otherwise has the appearance of potential partiality.
- tzs 16y agoIn the i4i vs. Microsoft patent case, in that very district, the jury foreperson had 3 college degrees (one a graduate degree), a couple other jurors had math degrees, and one had a computer science degree. The judge had a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst before entering law school.
- gte910h 16y agoIncorrect, product liability and patent law both sides want educated people to understand what the hell is happening.
- dctoedt 16y ago> product liability and patent law both sides want educated people to understand what the hell is happening. Not always - if one side looks evil, the other side's lawyers might want jurors who can't understand the technology and therefore will vote based on good-guy-versus-bad-guy. Happens a fair amount.
- LeBlanc 16y agoThe reason they want to do it in East Texas is because the patent infringement federal court in east Texas is one of a few that handles patent infringement cases very quickly. Most federal courts that handle patent infringement are very backed up and getting a verdict on a case could take years. Obviously Webvention does not want to get caught up in an expensive and long court battle. They make their money from the $80K fees not the court battles.
- tomjen3 16y agoMost people on HN would never be allowed to sit in a jury -- they tend to filter the smart people out, as the lawyers can't really manipulate them (this isn't just kneejerk, try to show up for jury duty with a big book under your arm).
- zacharypinter 16y agoYet another example of a flawed patent system in need of reform.
- lr 16y agoIf the patent really is 17 years old, one might be able to forgive the USPTO for letting this one get by, considering nothing like it existed at the time (Gopher was probably the closest thing). Now, on the other hand, I fully agree with you that the patent system is in need of very serious reform.
- jonhendry 16y agoHypercard?
- rwmj 16y agoGood old multimedia CDs too.
- jonhendry 16y agoI'm not sure if those predated 1990. From what I can see, in the US multimedia CDs hit the US around 1991.
- stan_rogers 16y agoWell, Macromedia Director with Lingo (the software used to produce most of them) was released in '88. (Director is older, but had limited interactivity authoring capability before Lingo.) It definitely had image rollover effects when I was working with it in '89. CD drives may not have been ubiquitous at the time, but deployment via stacks of floppies was going on.
- TravisLS 16y agoThis patent is filed February 1990, issued October 1993 - wouldn't that make it expired? Or am I naive?
- weaksauce 16y agoYou are correct the larger of a 20 year protection from file date or 17 years from date of patent grant: http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp#heading-5 http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp#heading-5 For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, utility and plant patents are granted for a term which begins with the date of the grant and usually ends 20 years from the date you first applied for the patent subject to the payment of appropriate maintenance fees. Design patents last 14 years from the date you are granted the patent. No maintenance fees are required for design patents. Note: Patents in force on June 8, 1995 and patents issued thereafter on applications filed prior to June 8, 1995 automatically have a term that is the greater of the twenty year term discussed above or seventeen years from the patent grant.
- dctoedt 16y agoBut there's a six-year statute of limitations - a patent owner can sue [EDIT: for damages] for pre-expiration infringement up to six years after the infringement. (There may be potential wrinkles in the analysis if the infringement was an on-going one.) EDIT: What the patent owner can't do after expiration is get an injunction against further infringement.
- DanielN 16y agoI guess this is the aspect I don't understand. With a lifetime of twenty years, most software patents (a lot of hardware patents for that matter) cover the entire viable commercial lifetime of the product. In our brief experience of commercial software (what has it been? 40 years? Note: that's 2 patent terms) I can't think of very many software technologies that have lasted as a commercially viable product for 10 years let alone 20. To my limited understanding of how patents work and how the software market works I would think a patent term in the range of 1-5 years would be a lot more reasonable. It would allow for the patent holder to gain a competitively advantageous foothold in the market (the point of having a patent) and it would destroy the incentive of inventors to sell their patents rather than creating business from them. I'd be interested to hear from people with more knowledge of these subjects than me as to why this isn't the way software patents are maintained.
- todayiamme 16y ago>>>According to Law.com, Webvention acquired the property from the great patent gobbler itself, Intellectual Ventures<<< Why do I have this funny feeling that this is a front for intellectual ventures and lots of people are going to bought off?
- Devilboy 16y agoWouldn't be the first http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml
- sireat 16y agoIndeed, why would Intellectual Ventures sell some of its patents instead of doing the usual, that is using fronts to sue people. In fact, this case seems suspicously similar to earlier case Intellectual Ventures shell vs. Kodak http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/0302518496.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/0302518496.shtml This way IV can continue claiming that they never sued anyone(themselves).
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm not a violent person. But patent trolls make me have visions of dungeons and medieval tools... They're like parasites that try to find the optimal amount of blood that they can suck out of healthy businesses without killing them. Novartis having the moral high ground in a lawsuit is rare enough that that alone should give you pause as to how low these people really are. There are times that I wished I was a Catholic so I could condemn types like this - and mr. McBride - to hell. Failing that, debtors prison would be fine with me as well.
- callmeed 16y agoI couldn't agree more. In fact, in one of our products there is a specific feature that would be be extremely beneficial to our users. But we will likely never be able to implement it ... all because of such a troll that has gone after larger players in the space.
- anonqwe 16y ago(Posting from a throwaway account) These asshats threatened to sue the company I work for. We ended up removing the "offending" technology from our site because we were not going to pay their ridiculous licensing fee and we could not afford fighting them in court. I spent three days removing code that made our site easier to use. It was depressing.
- jcromartie 16y agoI really wonder: do they have any power over people except for fear? What if you just say "go screw yourselves." And leave it at that? Would there be serious consequences?
- techtalsky 16y agoYes. They can sue. And if you just don't show up they can get a summary judgement against you. If you show up without a lawyer their lawyer can make you look unprepared. And if you show up WITH a lawyer then you have to pay a lot of money for the lawyer.
- jacquesm 16y agoI did that to 'acacia', they took a walk when they found out that I could probably invalidate their patent. (and I probably really could, and would). It's like the mafia, they like to pick on the weak, the slightly stronger they'll go after in court if they think they can win. But they're cowards at heart and they will avoid a confrontation if the other party might damage them. And if the stakes are high enough and they've been successful in the past with their shakedown they'll sue big companies that are not going to be able to invalidate their patent directly (that's what's happening here, after all Novartis is not exactly a software development company, even though they have plenty of IT). Think about all the parties you could sue if you had a patent on the hyperlink.
- Natsu 16y ago> I did that to 'acacia', they took a walk when they found out that I could probably invalidate their patent. (and I probably really could, and would). I'd have looked up whoever else they were suing and maybe quietly passed along a tip about where to find prior art.
- gesh 16y ago"According to Law.com, Webvention acquired the property from the great patent gobbler itself, Intellectual Ventures." Aha.
- spot 16y agospawn of microsoft.
- janj 16y agoWhy hasn't 4chan ever gone after patent trolls? Seems like an appropriate, worthy target for them. Actually, I guess I haven't heard anything about 4chan for a while, are they done with that kind of stuff?
- AnonymousSage 16y ago4chan is always there. 4chan is never done. 4chan never forgets. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/todd-schmidt/1/834/759 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/todd-schmidt/1/834/759
- Perceval 16y agoAs far as I can tell, the folks on 4chan are concerned about ACTA, but aren't really riled up about any specific cases of patent trolling. There aren't a lot of lulz involved.
- raquo 16y agoSomeone PLEASE make a patent trolling incident database that would include cases like that one. Two purposes: 1) you will gather an enormous amount of trolling evidence which will come in handy when this issue will get more attention from government and the public 2) when the troll issues such notes en masse (which I think they do), it will be easier for the victims to connect and pool resources to invalidate the patent.
- Calamitous 16y agoIn Google: site:news.ycombinator.com "patent troll" Done. :)
- al_james 16y agoThats actually a good idea. What would be the requirements? It might be an interesting weekend project for me!
- raquo 16y agoYou need stuff like patent numbers in question, the companies involved, industries, categories, links to relevant news stories and blog posts, etc. People should be able to submit what they know (you don't want to gather all this info yourself, apart from some initial pile so that the site does not look empty). The website should be easy to use for 1) bloggers/journalists finding out about stories about blatant trolling 2) victims to report their case and find other victims affected by it (automatic search by patent number, trolling company name, etc) Note that victims will not look for your website in particular unless you're really popular. You have to create a lot of pages for each patent number, each company name, so that google picks them up and they come up on the first page when searching for patent number for example. This is unfortunately too much for simply a weekend project. The technology is trivial but getting traction with such a website, bringing it to the attention of major blogs and news outlets is the main work to be done.
- ericb 16y agoAn area for estimated economic damage in the incident reports (broken out by legal costs, code changes, abandoned projects, etc.) would help reporters and politicians find some jaw-dropping stats to quote.
- dhimes 16y agoInteresting comment in SO thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2609936/javascript-css-rollover-menus-are-patented-and-subject-to-licensing http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2609936/javascript-css-ro...
- rwhitman 16y agoInteresting quote from that comment: "A long, legal way to say this patent is public domain on 10/5/2010 and these guys are probably trying to snag a nickel before it goes out." Meaning the patent troll is trying to turn a last minute buck on something that should have gone public domain last week. At least it sounds like there isn't much to fear from this particular troll in the future
- dhimes 16y agoI hope he is correct. This group smells like a bad cancer, though. I have a feeling we are going to hear from them until they are stopped.
- oozcitak 16y agoHere: A method for aiding transportation by erect ambulation using lower appendages. You can not only sue most humans, but primates and meerkats as well. Seriously, how on earth do such patents get granted? I fail to see the invention in this patent claim. Is the patent office confused by the obscure language?
- VladRussian 16y agohow in hell such patent got issued? Were the patent authors the first to invent menus? Less than 20 years ago? Obviously not. There is pretty easy solution - don't issue patents when there is previous art. In addition - lets have the technical patent protection period to be shorter than 20 years. Say 5 or 10 years. That would allow the real inventor of menus ~40 years ago to enjoy the meaningful patent protection when it was making sense.
- kragen 16y agoThis is very interesting; it's the first time I've heard of an IV patent actually being (almost) litigated. Here are a couple of relevant points: - Running this patent as a separate company limits the potential downside for IV etc. Even if the legal system awarded legal costs to the winner of the suit, which it won't, and even if other companies countersued for tortious interference with business relationships, which they won't, the worst that can happen is that the patent corporation goes bankrupt and there's zero return to the investors. - It isn't necessary for IV to have control of, or even an ownership stake in, the licensing corporation. They can sell the patent to a company run entirely by third-party investors for its expected licensing revenues, minus some return for the investors. If the payments for the purchase are spread out over a period of time, then IV could charge a higher nominal price by sharing in the risk that the patent won't pan out (and that the corporation will therefore go bankrupt as a result with some payments still unpaid). - Webvention, to an even greater extent than IV itself, is immune to countersuits for infringements of other patents. - There's nothing stopping IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc., from doing the same thing. If Unisys had done this over the LZW patent, they wouldn't have suffered the PR black eye that they did.
- janj 16y agoA quote about the inventor (found here http://www.webventionllc.com/about_the_inventor http://www.webventionllc.com/about_the_inventor): "Dan Abelow is a prolific invetor and an expert on website usability, ease-of-use and assured user performance. He provides ongoing high-level consultation services to large corporations, and improves website usability, ensuring a competitive advantage for his clients." But then look at Dan's website: http://computing2.com/index.htm http://computing2.com/index.htm It's hard for me to believe that someone who promotes himself as an expert on website usability would have such an awful website. Is he somehow just a front for this patent trolling, or maybe he just got lucky with one very valuable patent?
- invisible 16y agoWhat IS sad is that he is not even using rollover images on the site! That's hilarious to me.
- catshirt 16y agoprolific invetor
- code_duck 16y agoHe has incredibly flexible arms.
- msy 16y ago"Abelow's independent inventions emerged from conceiving a new self-determined, worldwide content, communications and operating environment for individuals, corporations and societies, for self-guided improvements in their quality of life."
- andybak 16y agoI'd like to put forward the idea that what the anti-(software)-patent lobby needs is more and better patent trolls. Is it possible that the situation could get so bad that a couple of the big guns would swing behind patent reform?
- jon914 16y agoIt's ironic that the USPTO's own site technically violates this patent, unless they've paid the royalties. ;) http://www.uspto.gov/siteindex.jsp http://www.uspto.gov/siteindex.jsp
- pringle 16y agoLeave it to patent trolls to make you root for a pharmaceutical company.
- fara 16y agoI'm kind of glad this happens to Novartis. Our company (devartis) received an oposition from Novartis against our trademark registration solicitude in Argentina due to the similarity of the names. The funny thing is that they registered theirs in a different category and the similar part is the word "artis" (which is art in latin), and dictionary words can't be owned. I wonder how many software companies have the word soft in their names.
- davidmurphy 16y agoEvil exists in the world. QED.
- metellus 16y agoIs there any way I can patent the process of patent trolling?
- arethuza 16y agoToo late: http://boingboing.net/2008/11/17/halliburton-tries-to.html http://boingboing.net/2008/11/17/halliburton-tries-to.html
- retube 16y agoSomething of a tangent, but Intellectual Ventures (from whom these "patents" was purchased) was reviewed with gushing admiration in Superfreakonomics - all geniuses, all wonderful etc. According to the authors they have solutions for many of the worlds major problems (global warming, big hurricanes for example). Glad to hear developing ridiculous patents is a part of this!