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Patent Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop
- Zenst 14y agoThe way those patents are worded, they could equaly apply to TCP/IP, switch's/routers, any HA system and many more previously used technologies out there predating this drivil. There a load of bollocks and how they got allocated patents is in itself a case for the aformentioned companies havinga right to sue the patent office for incompetance.
- monochromatic 14y agoI'm guessing you haven't read the claims?
- Zenst 14y agoI had a quick look at the patents and there wording which the claims are based upon. Your right I didnt read there claims but when somebody says 3 and there working out is 1+1 then I'll look at the working out and not there conclusion. In this case its the patents.
- gergles 14y agoWhy is this bullshit platitude always a response to anyone complaining about a patent? The claims for software patents almost never provide anything more than the abstract, just in a few hundred more words. As an example, let's take the first independent claim from the '662 patent: " A storage system, comprising: one or more memory sections, including one or more memory devices having storage locations for storing data, and a memory section controller capable of detecting faults in the memory section and transmitting a fault message in response to the detected faults; and one or more switches, including one or more interfaces for connecting to one or more external devices; and a switch fabric connected to one or more memory sections and the external device interfaces and interconnecting the memory sections and the external device interfaces based on an algorithm; and a management system capable of receiving fault messages from the memory section controllers and removing from service the memory section from which the fault message was received, and wherein the management system is further capable of determining an algorithm for use by a switch fabric in interconnecting the memory sections and the external device interfaces, and instructing the switch to execute the determined algorithm, wherein an interface of the switch is connected to a non-volatile storage device, and wherein the management system is further capable of instructing the non-volatile storage device to load data into one or more of the memory sections via the switch." So... any HA system ever invented? Like the summary said. Great, thanks. Glad that you won a point on "you didn't read the claims!!!!1111" which are content-free garbage, like every other software patent.
- Zenst 14y agoIn all fairness he is right I hadn't read the claims in full so I gave him a +1 for that. But as I explained I read the patents which are the basis for the claims. Your right though that they do word these things so losely that my mother giving birth to me many years ago probably violated some routing patent and in that I agree fully with you in that it is just wrong. Your both right :) Though all of us agree trolls are bad in any form, and in that I look forward to these trolls getting educated at there own expence when they lose.
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- monochromatic 14y ago> content-free garbage You mean "the most important part, by far."
- anamax 14y ago> Why is this bullshit platitude always a response to anyone complaining about a patent? Because "the claims" define what the patent actually covers. Note that the claims can't be read in isolation. The words in the claims get their meaning from the specification. For example, a claim could use the word "lawnmower" to refer to what you and I would call a banana by defining "lawnmower" appropriately. Just looking at the claims is better than nothing, but is still basically useless.
- monochromatic 14y ago> For example, a claim could use the word "lawnmower" to refer to what you and I would call a banana by defining "lawnmower" appropriately. Yeah, a patentee can be his own lexicographer, but... I've never seen anything like this in practice, and I've read a lot of patents. Reading the claims in isolation generally gives you a pretty good idea of what the patent's about, once you get the hang of claim reading.
- mindstab 14y agoWhat if (somewhat borrowing an idea from PG actually, but I think this might be a bit more feasible) big tech companies started retaliating against trolls and lawyers who support them by banning them from their services. These guys (lawyer's site) have a linkedin link on the front page. What if they were banned from that. Do they use gmail or other google services? Banned Facebook? Banned Obviously it's actually probably excitingly hard to maintain this list with an accuracy but it's an entertaining thought experiment. Do you support and supply service to patent trolls and their lawyers who harm the community and may one day actually sue you?
- jvehent 14y agowhat if, instead, you would just let them use your service, and simply spy on them ?
- noonespecial 14y agoIf insurance companies can charge me quadruple premiums for the rest of my life for a trivial "existing condition", or prevent me from insuring my home because I once filed a flood claim, I think tech companies can find a way to freeze out trolls. We just need a CLUE database for trolls.
- farmdawgnation 14y agoThere's actually precedent for this in other industries. Some rental leases include clauses that say they can throw you out if you're found guilty of libel and slander against the real estate company. Of course, they've got to prove that first - but same deal.
- cma 14y agoTaft Hartley prevents secondary strikes/boycotts, it potentially makes this strategy illegal.
- bazzargh 14y agoNot quite. Taft Hartley prevents labour organizations from pressuring workers into boycotts. I don't think its applicable. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1069361?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=56306811463 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1069361?uid=3738032... The suggested strategy doesn't seem all that different from the Open Invention Network to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
- LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago> The toll of patent trolls on innovation has received special attention this month as two academics released a study concluding that trolls cost the economy $29 billion in direct costs every year. Wow that's almost as much as we spend on The War in six months.
- emperorcezar 14y agoSometimes I fantasize about a company with a lot of buying power, like Amazon, retaliating by hiring some mob thugs to break a few legs. Hey, respond to scum with scum. Of course it's just a fantasy. Edit: Company, not Computer.
- timaelliott 14y agoI fantasize about computers too. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see.
- alttab 14y agoHopefully enough of these get thrown out so the trolling will stop. Then we just have to worry about people stealing your technology overnight and turning every new innovation into a perfectly competitive market. I'm not being snarky, I think it's a tough problem to solve. Of course, the "toughness" is in trying to preserve financial incentives and profit, when maybe we should all just be motivated for the better of humanity and to make the world a better place? But maybe that's the folly of man and we are asking too much. In which case as a species we get what comes to us. I think that's enough existentialism for one night. *silly iPad autocorrecT
- ljd 14y agoTaking the position that non-patented work could be stolen overnight is an irrational, yet strangely a pervasive fear in software. It's why new entrepreneurs push NDA's on their initial contacts. It's been my experience that there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into building a successful tech company. Anything that is truly new technology is often kept as a trade secret. In software, patents are only great for defense.
- georgemcbay 14y agoI'm curious why Google isn't on the list? Hadoop is basically a clean room implementation of MapReduce and GFS anyway, to the point where Google graciously offered Apache a liberal patent license just to make sure Hadoop users didn't worry about Google coming after them when their patents came through on this stuff.
- rit 14y agoProbably because Google clearly has prior art. The initial white papers about Google Filesystem were presented in 2003: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=945450 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=945450
- tzs 14y agoOne of the patents was filed in 2002, so 2003 is not early enough to be prior art.
- rhizome 14y agoCharles Carreon is selling an ebook of his experiences for $5MM a copy.
- abhaga 14y agoWho are the four people who were originally granted the patent? I tried searching for them but all I got were either patent grants or the news about them suing other companies. I am interested in finding out the technical credentials of these inventors.
- keymone 14y agosometimes i think patent laws should be a bit more strict. like execute patent trolls and their families just to keep human genome a bit cleaner..
- fpp 14y agoEnough ranting lets get constructive before those xxx have ruined our industry completely. Step 1: It's election times soon so all politicians will normally be supportive to the one killer argument - patent trolls kill jobs in the US: (a) start tracing where the money paid within these "successful extortions" goes to - I'm confident a line to drug fused parties with Brazilian hookers, private jets & yachts, endless squandering lifestyles of some of the beneficiaries or their children can easily be established and generously visualized. (b) start large scale advertising campaigns together with these documentaries along the line "... our companies would have established xxx thousand jobs in the US if we would have not been forced by lobbying to finance the squandering lifestyles of the very few that are abusing the patent system..." /* call that throwing around dirt - well that seems to be the language our politicians e.a. immediately understand */ Step 2: Patent laws can already be rendered nil today based on national security concerns - we need something similar in the interest of the (real) economy: (a) all profits / royalties / fees from patent licensing are taxed at the double or at least maximum income rate due immediately when the money flows - all offshore entities are barred from receiving any funds before these taxes are paid - this is to insure that patents are used defensively and not to monopolize complete business sectors or extort huge sums from those actually creating products by NPEs. (b) all additionally collected taxes from this are earmarked to support startups / SMEs in defending against patent litigations or generally as start-up funding Step 3: The patent system is being reformed and all previously granted software, plants / DNA patents reviewed. Patent reviews might be prioritized e.g. by large number of requests, overwhelming prior art, clear obviousness of the invention etc. (a) all software patents have to be demonstrated with a functional model / prototype - the application of the prototype defines the application of the patent. (b) While these reviews or changes to the patent system are ongoing, patents claims are evaluated in all litigations in the strictest sense of the actual application / apparatus described and no (overly) broad adaption are allowed like today e.g. patents for doing xxx in telephone switching solutions blocking the same things 15 years later on the web. In an optimal implementation these changes are coordinated / also implemented in other leading economies rendering the possibilities to circumvent or block these measures unprofitable. A historical side-note: In times of dire economies whenever the "rulers" of countries have seen benefit from innovation, creating of new industries and companies, they have relaxed the patent laws that overall in history almost all the time have been used merely to create monopolies or protect existing monopolies from competition. My best example for this is the rise of Prussia to one of the globally leading industrial nations from a farm based economy and the parallel downfall of the UK from leading the first industrial / technology revolution. Now I'm almost certain that most of the above will never happen due to the vested interests / special interest groups involved or benefiting substantially from the current situation, but it would be nice to at least see some reason in the use of patent law again.