A patent lawsuit against GNOME
lwn.net
lwn.net
I hope Gnome is able to take a Newegg approach here and kill the patent.
[1]: http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com/qr-code-patent-troll-sues-d...
[2]: "A Florida inventor named Leigh M. Rothschild is the largest single NPE based on the number of defendants who have been added to patent lawsuits he filed, according to the the report." https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0106/Despite-crack...
How do you propose paying for that? It is fantastically expensive.
I'd be happy if someone held me to that.
I could already see this story making headlines in pretty much every tech news outlet there is. They'd get a few thousand individual donations for sure.
Or will some of the money be recovered if the case is won? Thinking about it, wouldn't it be fair if you were more than compensated in case you won a lawsuit filed against you?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney's_fees...
Patent trolls obviously act in bad faith.
Wow, that's all? That's actually really encouraging, if true. I would have assumed it was millions.
We have to start getting more aggressive in these scenarios. If the patent isn't killed, they're just going to turn around and sue someone else with it. So if we want a world where small players can compete with the likes of Microsoft or Facebook, we need to retaliate against trolls who go after small players.
Honestly I wish more countries would take New Zealand's approach and just outright ban all software patents. There is no reason any software patent should exist.
But if every one of their threats resulted in someone dragging them into an expensive fight over whether or not that patent was valid, maybe eventually they'd just go bankrupt from the legal fees.
Essentially, use their own strategy against them. Whenever they sue someone, they have two choices: roll over and let the patent get invalidated, or fight an expensive lawsuit against a party that refuses to settle.
* The lawyers got paid so much money there is no more money left to pay the receptionist and the power company and the copier rental.
* The troll is protected from paying any damages to the legal team that defeated them.
So the lawyers/executives suck up all the money and move on, leaving a wake of destruction behind them. In many cases, that should be considered criminal.
And the owners both bankrupted and jailed, or they'll just do it again.
Nonetheless I'm throwing some money into the pot, hopefully it is used to fight this troll case, which thankfully may be so facially ridiculous that it is thrown out.
I'd happily donate to a legal fund to fight this lawsuit though.
GNOME Foundation could probably just use GitLab.com, it wouldn't take a full time staff if their focus was infrastructure. It seems like the GNOME Foundation is predisposed with gaining institutional power over the symbols of GNOME, to egoistically control the community.
oh, that American health insurance website.
Put me down for $20 if it comes up.
Revenue (2014) - $667,370
Is there a precedent?
Are they after the usual troll thing, a quick settlement less than lawyer fees to fight it?
Does nonprofit status of the victim become relevant?
Donations are not necessarily consistent over years. You'll also have expanses.
I would personally donate hundreds each year if such organization existed, patent trolls are my worst software nightmare.
(I just donated $50 - good luck guys)
Or maybe not, maybe they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. But you know, it’s not like it would take so much time or effort that it would be much of a shame if it did nothing at all.
These sorts of trolls tend to operate with a minimal amount of staffing since they're usually subsidiary spin off companies (so nothing but bare bones is allocated in terms of payroll) and since patent trolling is such a gamble (if you're trolling 200 patents with the expectation of getting one or two hits then you should try and minimize costs)
This could be accomplished with a legal mechanism that allows the defendant to counter-sue the plaintiff as a patent troll. In this scope they could bring in previous litigative history of the plaintiff (or any related entities, piercing the corporate veil). If the judge rules in the defendant's favor, then all of the plaintiff's patents (and any related entities) are immediately released into public domain.
This would go a long way to preventing patent trolling. And not just because of the direct incentives. Any entity engaging in a patent lawsuit would put their entire portfolio at risk. The larger the portfolio, the higher the risk. The individual or small company with one or a few patents has very little risk. Whereas the large company that hoards thousands and thousands of patents would bear enormous risk on any single lawsuit.
Though that doesn't help against NPE.
Plus if you toss lawyer in jail and disbar them you will run out of lawyers to sac pretty quickly.
There's also a difference between sitting on a handful of dumb patents v. most or all of your patent litigation cases being over dumb patents.
Seriously, want to solve all white collar crime ever? Put some jail time on the table and watch everyone straighten right out.
This basically destroys patent trolling, which only works because of the asymmetrical difference in cost between obtaining a patent and defending a patent lawsuit. If the troll prices the patent too low, the person they are suing just buys it, if they charge too much, they have a massive recurring tax bill (and an incentive to settle quickly, not to drag it out in the courts for years).
This is one of several related reasons why I hate the term "intellectual property". Ideas are not property, and shoving them into a property-rights framework and thinking of them as such leads to all sorts of perverse results.
If you can’t make the thing event slightly useful in five years, society doesn’t gain much for you having an exclusive monopoly on the thing. So long as the tax is low percentage wise, the yearly cost to keep it as your own would be well worth it.
It would disable "defensive" patent strategies where companies don't patent their actual technology, but the path to it, which is against the spirit of patents, and disable patent acquisition as an IP strategy.
Meanwhile companies like ARM, which live off IP licensing but wouldn't be punished because they're the original patent authors.
The main criteria in the EU is whether the method embodied in the software is “technical.” (Image recognition as opposed to say a business method.) See: https://mewburn.com/resource/patentability-of-business-metho...
In the US, under Alice, Section 101 has morphed into a very similar analysis.
I'm sure his phone or internet access don't at any point rely on such software.
Nikonn CoolPix had wifi support in 2005. I'd imagine if you could select specific pictures to upload wherever from the device, that's the whole patent claim invalidated by 4 years. Hell, this article even references a device that Nikon offered to wirelessly transmit images as early as 2003. Find one of these, bring it to the law firm defending Gnome and that should invalidate the patent.
https://connectedsocialmedia.com/1163/sharpcast-demo-brings-...
filtering the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images,
wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image;
“yes, I would like to patent the sale of a spade when you buy a rake”
The patent system is so broken. It's as if drug companies, instead of patenting a specific treatment for cancer, were able to patent "treating cancer".
I understand it's not patenting facial recognition in general, just in the specific case of using facial rec or other techniques (which the lawyers called transfer criteria/subject identification) to identify subjects of images before filtering by subject and transferring them wirelessly.
I stand by the meaning of the simile though. There's nothing original enough to be patentable in that claim.
A specific method for doing facial recognition should be patentable. "Use facial rec to identify individuals in images, then filter for specific individuals, then transfer those images" should not. If we allow patents on use cases, every use case will be patented and eventually the trolls will have a collection of patents that together cover the very idea of recognizing faces.
I do agree that the patent is too unclear and broad, and that everything described must have been already known by 2008.
Which would make the patent even more laughable. "Wirelessly transfer all images I've tagged with 'Vacation 2017'" is patentable?
...filter the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images, wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image; and transmit, via the wireless transmitter and to a second mobile device, the filtered plurality of photographic images.
Invaliding prior art has to cover every single thing in the claim. (And my hunch is that it's out there).
A. Classifying images based on a (pre-existing?) identification; B. Filtering images based on classification; C. Wirelessly transmitting images
were all known at the time. Then you could argue that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would have known to combine A+B+C to solve the problem. Thus the prior art teaches the invention and the patent should be declared invalid.
You are much better off defending again infringement suits with novelty arguments.
Any more info about this? Never heard of it admittedly.
Lee furthermore pursued a strategy of trying to win by invalidating the patent. Newegg got enough of a reputation for this that patent trolls would mass-file a lawsuit, realize that they had included Newegg in the lawsuit, and withdraw the suit. So then Newegg started a strategy of chasing down any patent troll dumb enough to file a suit against Newegg, and aggressively sue them in retaliation -- again, seeking to invalidate the patent (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues-pate...).
Cheng and Newegg eventually went their separate ways, and I haven't heard much from either one since. But, for a while, Newegg was in the tech news every few months for doing real damage to another patent extortion outfit, and it was glorious.
> An image-capturing mobile device, comprising Shotwell is not an image-capturing device.
It would be like Target patenting "a system for selling goods to consumers" and suing any other retailer with a checkout.
For every monetary incentive of developing something new, there are 10 obstacles because of patent law. Patents are a hindrance more than an aid.
There are probably 100 or 1000s of issued patents related to spell checking -- they can solve same problem as long as how they solve the problem is different.
> In an electronic word processing system for creating and editing a document, the document comprising a plurality of sentences, a combined spelling and grammar dialog box for displaying both spelling and grammatical errors in one of the plurality of sentences in the document comprising:
> a rich text edit command (RTEC) field for displaying both spelling and grammatical errors found within the sentence and editing the sentence;
> an error title line for indicating whether the error displayed in the RTEC field is a spelling error or a grammatical error;
> a suggestions list box for displaying a suggestions list, the suggestions list comprises a fist plurality of suggestions operative for correcting the spelling error found if the error type displayed in the error title line indicates a spelling error, or the suggestions lists comprises a second plurality of suggestions for correcting the grammatical error found if the error type displayed in the error title lined indicates a grammatical error;
> a plurality of common command buttons operative for correcting both errors in the spelling and in the grammatical composition of the sentence displayed in the RTEC field.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6085206A
In other words: an editable sentence, the description of a spelling or grammatical error, a list of suggestions to fix the error, and some buttons to apply a suggestion, skip, etc.
That specific combination of UI elements was perhaps new in 1996 (as were most GUIs), but not what I'd call an "invention" so valuable to society that it deserves 20 years of protection from free market competition.
The actual spelling and grammar analysis code might be worthy of protection for a year or two, but they probably lifted most of that from some college kid's paper.
For about 10 years the US had a judge made "flash of genius" standard that was part of determining patentibility. It was eliminated by the US Congress in 1952.
I haven't done the research, but I imagine the flash-of-genius standard was repealed because it is impossible to objectively quantify. Current non-obviousness analysis incorporates some things that might be evidence of a flash of genius without going there, such as, market success, unmet need, and so on. But usually non-obviousness is determined if one cannot find subject matter in printed publications that one of ordinary skill in the art could combine to make the claimed invention.
The closest analogue I could imagine would be a test in which your patent includes a problem statement and a solution which solves that problem, and the test for obviousness is to present the problem statement to a group of skilled professionals and see if the solution they craft for that problem statement matches the patent, and strike any claims they propose.
This is a very unreliable test and a lousy and expensive standard, but it's the best I've got.
Several valid patents can be directed at the same exact problem as long as they solve it using different techniques.
Take as an example the "Drinking Bird." Imagine the inventor has applied for a patent. You get some materials engineers and a physicist or something in a room, describe a device which resembles a bird and continuously sips water, and ask them to devise a way to build it in a few hours. If they describe a bulb full of dichloromethane with a tube leading up to a beak, then it's not patentable.
That seems pretty specific ... what would be an analogous software scenario?
Programmers/UX designers brainstorming session includes several ideas, including this one: What if we remembered customer addresses and credit card info and just had a single button that said "buy"?
Patent denied.
Proving non-obviousness is well trod ground in litigation and in patent examinations. It is often the hardest criteria to get over.
Though typically obviousness can be proven by finding two or more printed publications that in combination disclose the claimed invention.
In this example, the novelty in the claim at issue is related to using a transfer criteria that is a subject identification of the image...wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the image. This was added as the final amendment to get the patent over the prior art the examiner cited.
If one can find evidence in [edit: one or more] printed publications that this was going on before 8/8/2008, the patent can be invalidated easily. Otherwise, it will be a slog of litigation.
It's my opinion that in order to sue for infringement, a patentee should first have to convince a court that their invention is nonobvious, using objective tests such as these. The PTO is poorly placed to guage nonobviousness, for several reasons. First is simply the sheer amount of knowledge required to be able to judge what is obvious and what isn't. Second is the incentive structure at the PTO: examiners are rewarded for closing applications one way or another, not for rejecting arguably obvious patents. Third is the fact that some relevant evidence, namely the commercial success of the invention, simply isn't available yet at application time, and won't be until months or years later.
So the situation we have now is one where the courts tend to defer to the PTO on obviousness, but the PTO isn't set up to do a good job judging it in the first place.
For all these reasons I think it would be better if the burden of proof were on the patentee to prove nonobviousness, rather than on the PTO or defendants to prove obviousness; and if that proof had to be given in a court before an infringement suit could even be filed. This system would be very efficient given that closer scrutiny would have to be applied only to those patents whose litigation was seriously contemplated, a small fraction of all patents issued.
IPR is a step in this direction, certainly, but I'm not sure it goes far enough.
My guess is that it's not necessarily that people at the patent office have a hard time telling if something is obvious, so much as that the incentive structures at play are all wrong.
I imagine that, if a patent reviewer denies a patent application, they potentially have a fight on their hands when their decision gets challenged. Whereas, if they approve it, any argument ensuing from that decision will be the court's problem. It's a classic "keep your head down and don't cause any trouble for yourself" situation.
Assuming I'm right on that guess, I'd further guess that it's also a classic "I'm not paid enough for this shit" situation. I don't have any friends at USPTO, but I have friends who work in other government offices, and, from what they've said, I would assume that that is a deciding factor in a large percentage of decisions that are being made by rank-and-file government employees across all branches. And I doubt patent clerks are any more likely than any other kind of clerk to be getting paid "dealing with this shit" money.
Obviousness requires a reputable, dated source stating something like "I have combined these two elements" or "Someone should combine these two elements". While magazines or trade literature are acceptable sources, the prior art search is typically conducted primarily through the patent archive. It's a slam dunk if you have two patents with claims that cover the same invention and some way in the text to tie them together. You can't generally rely on your 'expert opinion' that it's obvious because you say so.
Patent examiners are also promoted and retained primarily based on the volume of patents they process. IIRC the bar is something like one or two patents processed a day. That would mean 6-8 hours of reading the patent, researching prior art, writing the response, reading the attorney's response and writing your final disposition, as well as any appeals. Regardless of size of patent.
All this for mid 5 figures to low six figures in NOVA
Captain Non-Obvious works there.
They should move way to the other side on the scale of obviousness. Patents should be there to protect investments, not to stake out ideas bright and not so bright practitioners can stumble upon. In my opinion only ideas that necessitated a few man-years of work to be discovered should be patentable with onus on inventors to prove nonobviousness. I wouldn't be surprised if only pharma patents would survive only because expensive trials are needed.
If whenever a patent was overturned, the Patent Office had to pay the court costs of the one who managed to overturn it, they'd be a lot more circumspect about what they approved.
Edit: Not sure why that's controversial... Some time around 2009 I finally got my parents hooked up with cable internet vs the DSL they had before and wowed them by playing a movie over the internet from my home media server. I didn't invent "a method and process for transmitting a full length movie over a network without quality degradation", but my mom sure thought so. I did some "computer work" and a "novel" new ability emerged.
Edit: Changed whats in () to something less offensive.
> (and normies in general)
I don't think it would be controversial had you not condescendingly referred to "normies".
Patent examiners all have degrees in science or engineering. See, for example, this job listing: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/545074300. They're also organized into art groups which become experts in narrow fields of inventions.
> simple incremental improvements.
Almost every patent issued is an incremental improvement of some other invention. By "simple" you probably mean non-obvious, which is one of the requirements for patentability.
> I did some "computer work" and a "novel" new ability emerged.
That's a different kind of novelty. It's not patentably novel if anyone, anywhere in the world, ever did it publicly before you.
Yeah, other patents are problematic, but at least patents of yore were more like "here's my design for a door hinge. Here's a diagram showing my specific implementation. There are many ways to mount a door and this is one I've invented and physically produced. Anyone else is free to create a different hinge mechanism."
A modern software patent version of that is "I thought of the idea of a hinge in my basement. They've existed for centuries but I'll be the first to file. No, I've never physically produced a single one. Yes, any implementation of opening a door infringes on my system-for-opening-a-door patent."
"A hinge device for a door is provided. The hinge device has two hinge members which engage with each other and a hinge cap. A bearing with one or more tapered ends engages with the hinge members to allow easy opening and closing of a door attached to the hinge device."
Should Carl Benz not have been granted a patent for the motor-car? Engines, wheels, and seats were not new.
Constructing new capabilities for a computer, or a novel physical device to interface with the computer to extend its capabilities, should be patent-able.
IMO, in what I see of this patent, the computer used is not novel, the wireless signal utilized to transmit data is not novel, nor are the cameras that communicate with the computer novel. Nothing of value was built.
Law evolves over decades or centuries. Computer related patents are very new to the scene (in law years). They are getting better but there are still some clunkers out there.
In other more mature industries like medical devices, autos (auto parts really), kitchen gadgets, fasteners, packaging, HVAC, etc., the patent litigation (including trolls) is fierce too and has been for decades.
But I'm certainly in favour of some use-it-or-lose-it clause that lets a "portfolio" age quickly.
I guess what I'm asking is: do some people around here have stories of software patents actually working as intended and protecting small innovators from software giants?
Well that’s not even close to true.
Software is fundamentally a mechanism that maps inputs to outputs. We've had a similar mechanism for a while now, mathematics. And we decided that - as complicated as mathematical theory and equations can be, there is no justice making a particular instance of math a novel, patentable, encumbered creation. It's all a derivative of the concept of mathematical manipulation, same as all software is a manipulation of a state machine.
Saying "this particular combination of state transitions is novel" is non-sensical to me.
This sounds like that ridiculous time when Amazon patented the concept of buying something from an online store by clicking a [singular] button.
At this point, patent law doesn't protect any invention from being stolen, as it's supposed to, but instead denies people the right to sell their own original idea because someone else registered it first.
The main reasons why this seems to become more and more of a problem are a) globalization means patents have a much longer reach b) the increasing pace of technological advances makes it harder to be aware of every possible invention in a field and c) the increase in supporting technology makes even complex-sounding inventions trivial to implement.
With all those things in mind, my opinion is that the trade-off has tipped over the point of balance; it used to be that patent laws predominantly protected the rights of inventors from intellectual theft; these days, more than anything, it's abused to legally lock inventors out of selling their creations.
I'd say patent law, as a concept, needs a complete rework. It's just not fit for the 21st century anymore.
Think using voice control to turn on your toaster; it sounds like quite a task, but it becomes trivial by leveraging technologies like Googles voice assistance, IFTTT and some cheap IoT hardware.
The underlying elements of a computer : processor, RAM, input, networking are interesting systems to a patent examiner
Even though you want to talk about the thing in your head that does a very specific application describable in one line you have to include that systems stuff
> The Product practices transmitting, via a wireless transmitter and to a second image capturing device, the filtered plurality of photographic images. For example, the Product offers a number of ways to wirelessly share photos online such as through social media.
It then specifically calls out a screenshot of http://yorba.org/shotwell/help/ with scary red lines highlighting how you can "export photos" and "publish to the Web" and "send photos via email, instant messaging, or in other ways."
...which just use whatever network interface the system has. And sure, that could be wireless... but it's not like Shotwell has any say (or necessarily any knowledge) of that, right?
How does patent law deal with that, where the wholly circumstantial and independent properties of a product's operating environment could result in a system with emergent properties that violate the patent, and which are wholly outside of the control of the original software?
E.g., if I'm using Shotwell on a home computer plugged into an Ethernet cable, but there's a radio link somewhere on the route between me and Facebook... would that instance of Shotwell suddenly be in violation of the patent?
I don't think you want to know the answer to that question.
> A method performed by an image-capturing mobile device, comprising:
> receiving a plurality of photographic images;
> filtering the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images, wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image;
> and transmitting, via a wireless transmitter and to a second image capturing device, the filtered plurality of photographic images.
IANAL, and I am not sufficiently well-versed in patent law to know precisely how the terminology is to be interpreted in court, but that last element of the claim is really hard to substantiate. First, there's no evidence that it's transmitting via a wireless transmitter (if it doesn't, it can't violate the claim by definition!). Second, there is strong evidence that the destination is not a "second image capturing device." If that last clause is not violated, then the claim is not violated, and the patent is not violated.
From the way the patent claims are constructed, it feels like the patent examiner narrowed the patent to cover specifically wireless point-to-point transmission of images. I don't think the court will look kindly on the broad interpretation being used here.
You’d think that would keep all the brilliant legal minds on HN from commenting on it!
I appreciate your analysis of it. You’re one of the few here who did read it.
"A system and method for distributing at least one digital photographic image is presented, the system and method comprising at least one capturing device and at least one receiving device disposed in a communicative relation with one another via at least one wireless network. In particular, the capturing device is structured to capture the at least one digital photographic image via, for example, a capture assembly, whereas the receiving device is cooperatively structured to receive the digital photographic image via, for example, the at least one wireless network. In addition, the capturing device(s) and receiving device(s) may be disposed in a selectively paired relationship via one or more common pre-defined pairing criteria. Further, the at least one digital photographic image may be filtered via at least one pre-defined transfer criteria disposed on the capturing device and/or receiving device."
The whole patent system in general is a massive drag on innovation and the economy. Sure it's supposed to do the opposite, but that the difference between theory and practice.
The way it is now it's harms technological progress with this sort of nonsense.
If there are any assholes in this situation, they're the people who set up the patent system and the ones thay defend its existence.
I mean, if you're looking for that, the Viking lander in 1976 did the same thing: transmit a digital image from the capture device, filter and save it at the other end. Even Mariner 4, in 1964 might fit those criteria.
https://www.uspto.gov/patent/first-inventor-file-fitf-resour...
No, it just removes the question of when an invention happened. Under first to invent, if two similar patents are filed, there is some effort required to determine which was invented first, and gets priority. Under first to file, it's much simpler to determine.
Prior art is still a reason to deny a patent, and patent examiners are still likely to miss it.
If I published it before you filed though, that's prior art. Again, I'm not super familiar with details here of if it had to be published for some time or just the day before is fine.
I love this as prior art. The Viking lander was definitely "a mobile device", was wireless and transferred images. I think the only question might be if the "filtering" involved qualifies.
Commercial digital TV was first introduced in the US in 1994, also predating this patent. That's fairly well known and widespread, also all of the TVs all of us own and which are part of FCC standards violate this patent.
You have to look at the steps.
A patent is a recipe for 'creating' the invention. You do A, and B, and C, and then D, and then furthermore E... etc etc. You have to look at those steps and understand what they mean to see what the actual patent is about.
So if the patent says 'You need to do A, B, C, and D' and Gnome does "A, B, and D", but not C... then Gnome doesn't violate the patent.
Changing the behavior of the application or showing how the application doesn't follow all the steps outlined in the patent is probably the most effective way to 'defeat' a patent.
But regardless it's a frivolous lawsuit that will likely cost Gnome a lot of money and time for no good reason.
I would be very surprised if an org like the EFF didn't step in and do a lot of free work. I'd gladly pay into a legal defence fund specifically to ensure that the word on the street is that patent trolls going after open-source developers get taken to the cleaners.
If the court invalidates the patent, which is likely, GNOME and other free software projects can use that as a precedent in the future, which makes it harder for trolls to operate. The smart troll picks "soft targets" who will just roll over and pay.
If the court awards statutory damages, GNOME made no money because they sold no software, so it's possible the statutory damages ends up being less than the cost to litigate. The smart troll does not pick "zero-value targets" like GNOME.
If the court awards punitive damages, GNOME has very little revenue and may not be able to pay all the damages. The smart troll does not pick "poor targets" like GNOME.
This feels like a poorly-paid paralegal just shotgunned a bunch of suits and really, really screwed up.
If they get a judgment against GNOME for violating this patent, it would make a lot of news and likely be appealed. Getting to a final precedent in favor of patent infringement would take years, sinking lots of lawyer dollars into the effort, and the whole process is fraught with an enormous amount of risk.
I just don't see them having that kind of long play in their playbook. But I don't know anyone involved... It could be they are acting stupid but are really smart?
If you should happen to chase the thief away this time it isn't much of a victory if the thief and his compatriots faces little to no consequences.
Firstly software patents are a net negative and shouldn't be a thing. Next plainly frivolous patents should subject the owner to a fine at time of application. Make the seeker pay an additional bond forfeit for frivolous patents.
Next make granting bad patents expensive for the government. Let anyone read patents in process and by proving them void claim the aforementioned bond.
Have you studied these propositions in the past, or are these ideas you came up with after researching?
Let's use up the news momentum to give GNOME (more) resources to bury these fuckers.
RMS quirky as fuck. More than anything it's a shame he just couldn't pick up on that one social skill.
Wired did a fairly decent write-up, although I disagree that his speaker's pack is convoluted. https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of...
Doesn't exist as far as I can tell.
I have not seen any examples of RMS misogyny mentioned in ANY of the RMS threads on hackernews so far.
What definition of "misogyny" are you using and what examples do you have that meet that definition?
> Stallman has made many posts sympathizing with efforts to legalize some forms of child pornography. Among other things, they stated that he was "skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children". These comments were defended by his supporters on Slashdot. As of 2016, there are reports of Stallman changing his views on the matter within the previous few years.[2] However, in 2018 he defended Cody Wilson, who later pled guilty to sex with an underage girl, with Stallman saying that the girl likely had "entirely willing sex with him." Stallman changed his original post but nevertheless still said it is "normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents" and that adults using trafficked children shouldn't be legally responsible. In 2019, Stallman posted an email to an MIT listserv about the allegation that MIT professor Marvin Minsky raped a 17-year-old girl, and due to public outcry he resigned from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation.
> For many years, Richard has been doing a schtick about "St. Ignutius" that involves Sexist humor. His performance of this shtick in July 2009 sparked the EMACS virgins joke incident.
> The "St. Ignutius" routine mentioned above has been performed relatively unchanged since the early 90s, as a commenter recounts on a blog post about the EMACS virgins joke. The commenter writes about seeing the routine when she was only 15, and how RMS singled her out several times during that performance:
> He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)
Do you have any empathy for how it would feel as a 15 year old girl surrounded by dudes to be in this position?
> In a 2007 interview, he said:
I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.
A number of women have contributed to GCC, including:
Janis Johnson maintains the test suite and has been a contributor since 2001
Sandra Loosemore is the lead author of the GNU Library Reference Manual;[3] RMS is listed as her co-author.
Dorit Nuzman made major contributions to loop scheduling and vectorization.
Carolyn Tice is also mentioned as a contributor.Even if the patent is invalidated, it has already created a lot of unnecessary work and no innovation.
I am just thinking Gnome foundation can fight, think of a small firm who doesn’t have money to fight and represent in court.
This seems to be right opposite of patents to protect innovation. It looks like patents to litigate and make money and hamper any innovation.
After so many frivolous patents like amazon single click, oracle java and many more I don’t see any innovation but attack on innovation and waste of time and money on not required debate in court.
I believe this system is in place to generate jobs for lawyers who will not be able to earn otherwise. Lawyers promote strict patent laws and many non sensible, as many politicians are lawyers not innovators.
Prior art is still relevant WRT patent prosecution. The AIA made several changes to patent law, perhaps most notably making the effective filing date the determining factor for purposes of applying prior art, instead of the invention date. This means interferences no longer occur. There are also now different post-grant procedures for challenging patent validity.
Source: am a patent agent Disclaimer: this is not legal advice
The patent still looks bogus, but don't draw any premature conclusions from the above-cited case.
Non-profits can easily make their benefit calculation to send off a few thousand and/or hire counsel just to cover a cheap settlement. Much less expensive than the cost of litigation.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9448603B2/en?inventor=Le...
The claims describe "An image-capturing mobile device".
GNOME makes software that could be used on such a device, but surely no-one can claim that software _is_ a mobile device?
Claim 4 _could_ apply to the software, except it still says "mobile device" in that claim as well.
This is all without even considering how ludicrous the "invention" being claimed is. I'm pretty sure I could choose to transmit only some photos, based on date, from my phone way before 2008.
Funny. Can I patent whatever I can imagine (without actually building a working prototype) and sue everybody once the technology emerges making this possible and practical? Can science fiction writings be used as "prior art" to disqualify patents?
I'm admittedly not too sure of the specifics, but Samsung was prevented from using science fiction as a "prior art" defense against Apple:
http://allthingsd.com/20120802/samsung-wont-be-able-to-argue...
EDIT: Coincidentally, it seems the aforementioned patent expired today, https://patents.google.com/patent/USD504889S1/en
Red Hat offers to fight and protect end-users of their software that might get caught up in a patent fight like this one: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-assurance-faq
A previous recipient of the FSF 'Stupid Patent of the Month' award...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/stupid-patent-of...
Setting aside prior art for a moment, it seems like a pretty far stretch to say that classifying files according to metadata and uploading them to Flickr or Pinterest is equivalent to identifying the subject of a photograph and making it wirelessly accessible to another local device.
Is anyone, I mean anyone, here unaware of software prior to 1998 that would filter files into different folders based on, say, ID3 tags, EXIF data, or file timestamps?
[1] https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Leigh+M.+Rothschild&sor...
So, everyone's smartphones or digital cameras pair together and anyone that takes a photo has that photo distributed to the other devices. How is that anything like Shotwell?
Pfffft. Primitive animals destroying civilization at this Rothschild troll plantation.
We need patent reform that involves criminal felony penalties for trolls on the basis that their actions greviously harm civilization. Get these parasites off the street and away from harming the people doing actual useful work.
1. An image-capturing mobile device, comprising
a wireless receiver;
a wireless transmitter;
and a processor operably connected to the wireless receiver and the wireless transmitter, wherein the processor is configured to:
receive a plurality of photographic images;
filter the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images,
wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image;
and transmit, via the wireless transmitter and to a second mobile device, the filtered plurality of photographic images.
4. A method performed by an image-capturing mobile device, comprising:
receiving a plurality of photographic images;
filtering the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images,
wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image;
and transmitting, via a wireless transmitter and to a second image capturing device, the filtered plurality of photographic images.
Imglorp posted elsewhere in this thread suggesting perhaps the Mars Viking spacecraft would serve as prior art which I thought was clever. The only challenge might be whether any spacecraft prior to 2008 had a "filter" function that had a "transfer criteria" of "subject identification" that was "based on a topic, theme or individual shown".
I think the final element of transmitting to a "second mobile device" or a "second image capturing device" would be met by any lander that relayed through an orbiter that also had a camera.
>On information and belief, Defendant sells, offers to sell, and/or uses network storage systems and methods including, without limitation, the Gnome Shotwell platform, and any similar products (“Product”), which infringe at least Claim 4 of the ‘086 Patent.
Does Gnome Foundation sell Shotwell?
This type of company would soon not even be able to keep a website online.
> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/inventor-...
Birds of a feather.
I'm not sure how it could be argued that the Shotwell codebase contains anything specifically related to supporting wireless data transfer.
And we need to get rid of "do something we already do, but wirelessly!" patents and "do something we already do, but using a computer or network!" patents.
I'll donate for easy, but hope IBM can defend their investments.
Prior art abounds, perhaps most notably the EyeFi product line that came to market around 2006[0]
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060805175034/http://www.eye.fi...
Best company name.
Has anyone, anywhere, ever once faced a coding challenge, searched through software patents, and found a useful solution?
I'm laughing as I try to imagine either of these things happening.
A friend of mine recently earned good money serving as an expert witness against a patent claiming to cover the concept of transmitting a zero over a carrier wave. You see, the patent holder never actually produced a device taking advantage of this great idea, and then he "hurt his back and couldn't work anymore", so he sued his insurance company for the billions of potential dollars he could have earned if he ever did get around to transmitting a zero...
It doesn't always work out that way, but it's definitely not how you are putting it.