Bill Gates Blackmailing Denmark

[Nicholas Buenk]

That *is* the point of them: That he who invents it should reap the
benefit, for a period of time, of having done so.

Why in the world should I spend the time, effort, and money to invent
something if you're going to just copy it for free? YOU go waste a few
million inventing it and *I'll* do the copying.

He who invents it first has the advantage, patents should be greatly
reduced, maybe 6months in the software industry from release date, that is
ample time to profit from the research. Patents as they are now, are way too
excessive and cause more problems than good.

 

[JAD]

"> excessive and cause more problems than good.
only because YOU don't have a patent on anything..........................if
you did, and you sunk 2 million in R&D on your product, you would not
think for a second, that 6 months is long enough to 'make a profit'.

 

[Nicholas Buenk]

"> excessive and cause more problems than good.

only because YOU don't have a patent on
anything..........................if
you did, and you sunk 2 million in R&D on your product, you would not
think for a second, that 6 months is long enough to 'make a profit'.

For software, that's about half to a quarter of the amount of time you can
sell it in before it gets obsolete and into the budget piles, 6 months is a
long time in the computer industry, different industries should have patents
that last different lengths of time.

 

[Nicholas Buenk]

"> excessive and cause more problems than good.

only because YOU don't have a patent on
anything..........................if
you did, and you sunk 2 million in R&D on your product, you would not
think for a second, that 6 months is long enough to 'make a profit'.

Also, the point of patents is not to let the inventor become rich.
Excessively long patents do not motivate invention any better than shorter
ones, 6 months is enough time to cover your research costs at the speed at
what the computer industry goes through products, long patents just help
people to become rich which they should do without government help.

 

[George E]

He who invents it first has the advantage, patents should be greatly
reduced, maybe 6months in the software industry from release date, that is
ample time to profit from the research. Patents as they are now, are way too
excessive and cause more problems than good.

And it's even worse when machines are allowed to try to enforce those
things.

 

[Nicholas Buenk]

The world wants compatablity, they want their programs to run on any
computer. You don't require a single OS to achieve this, you just require
the removal of patent laws so that other OS's can reverse engineer
microsoft's API's, that way we'd have good competition.

 

[Mark Lloyd]

He who invents it first has the advantage, patents should be greatly
reduced, maybe 6months in the software industry from release date, that is
ample time to profit from the research. Patents as they are now, are way too
excessive and cause more problems than good.

And I would that if a patent is abandoned (patent holder fails to make
the product or service publicly available after a reasonable amount of
time), the patent is removed and anyone allowed to provide the product
of service.

 

[Overlord]

Good luck. But I think you'll find that getting a patent isn't quite as
easy as you seem to believe.

For one, you just told me, and on a public forum no less, which makes it
public domain. No patent.

Btw, I can't find any reference at all to a 'mouse' in the afore mentioned
patent. It's about "Time based hardware button for application launch" and,
in particular, "on a limited resource computing device" that is described
as "Small, mobile computing devices, such as personal desktop assistants
including hand-held and palm-type computers and the like." And the
"hardware button" is not a mouse key but the buttons on PDAs for launching
specific applications, as in "Therefore, as an alternative to launching
applications by using the stylus, the Palm-size PC contains a plurality of
buttons (called application buttons) that are used to launch the more
common applications installed on a Palm-size PC."

Yeah, noticed that. It appears more like a time dependant method of making
the buttons do double/triple duty on a hand held device with the Palm as an
example.

No doubt the EU will let me copyright the standard oval shape of a mouse tho
without regard to how long it's been around.
Witness the weird shit they've recently done regarding cookies.


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[JAD]

"E" commerce my friend Ecommerce.

You do in fact need One OS- to secure, control, and profit from, and above
all....NOT to share those profits.
Is Bill to be looked down on for this? Hell no....its what everybody
does.The difference? Bill and the 'powers' put it out there for public
scrutiny, to see how we (the lambs to the slaughter) will react.

 

[Andrew Smallshaw]

Also, the point of patents is not to let the inventor become rich.
Excessively long patents do not motivate invention any better than shorter
ones, 6 months is enough time to cover your research costs at the speed at
what the computer industry goes through products, long patents just help
people to become rich which they should do without government help.

Don't confuse the speed of product _releases_ with the speed of product
_development_. With the likes of M$ even a new version of Windows or
Office or whatever seems to be typically 18 months late. A fundamental new
technology may take _years_ to see its release as a commercially viable
product and I for one would like to see a new innovative idea implemented
properly in the first place rather than a half baked implementation going on
the market and causing all kinds of headaches in the long run.

Having said this I'm no great defender of software patents in general. The
old rule was you couldn't patent software, although any underlying algorithms
were fair game. That sounds fair enough to me. But now the line in this and
a lot of other patent areas seems to be being re-drawn (it seems to be the US
in particular that's pushing this through). IMHO its this 'patent-creep'
that's causing much of the controversy at the moment.

 

[Matt]

Good luck. But I think you'll find that getting a patent isn't quite as
easy as you seem to believe.

For one, you just told me, and on a public forum no less, which makes it
public domain. No patent.

Btw, I can't find any reference at all to a 'mouse' in the afore
mentioned patent. It's about "Time based hardware button for application
launch" and, in particular, "on a limited resource computing device"
that is described as "Small, mobile computing devices, such as personal
desktop assistants including hand-held and palm-type computers and the
like." And the "hardware button" is not a mouse key but the buttons on
PDAs for launching specific applications, as in "Therefore, as an
alternative to launching applications by using the stylus, the Palm-size
PC contains a plurality of buttons (called application buttons) that are
used to launch the more common applications installed on a Palm-size PC."

Okay sorry, it doesn't mention mice. Telegraph, mouse, PDA,
whatever---same concept: dots and dashes.

The fact that that patent was issued and still stands indicates that the
patent system is seriously broken.

The patent system is one of the main reasons for American economic,
technological, and military success, which is why there are so many
forces trying to ruin it, and having considerable success. There is no
way I would want to abolish the patent system, but patent policy has
been going seriously wrong for some years now.

 

[David Maynard]

He who invents it first has the advantage, patents should be greatly
reduced, maybe 6months in the software industry from release date, that is
ample time to profit from the research. Patents as they are now, are way too
excessive and cause more problems than good.

And what do you base a whopping 6 months on?

 

[David Maynard]

Also, the point of patents is not to let the inventor become rich.

Says who? And why not?

Excessively long patents do not motivate invention any better than shorter
ones,

I don't see anything to support that contention.

6 months is enough time to cover your research costs at the speed at
what the computer industry goes through products,

That products need to remain competitive in no way means the original,
patented, idea is 'discarded' or becomes 'obsolete'. Just as adding power
windows to your car offering in no way 'obsoletes' or diminishes the fuel
injector patent.

long patents just help
people to become rich which they should do without government help.

Your complaint is that the person who did the work gets rich instead of the
plagiarist.

 

[David Maynard]

Yeah, noticed that. It appears more like a time dependant method of making
the buttons do double/triple duty on a hand held device with the Palm as an
example.

Yep. Frankly, it would be interesting to see a challenge to that patent
because it isn't as if 'time dependent' buttons is a completely new thing
as most digital watches, to name one example, have had them for decades.

No doubt the EU will let me copyright the standard oval shape of a mouse tho
without regard to how long it's been around.
Witness the weird shit they've recently done regarding cookies.

Of course, something having been around a long time is supposed to be an
automatic patent killer but the weirdness of the EU is another matter

 

[David Maynard]

Don't confuse the speed of product _releases_ with the speed of product
_development_. With the likes of M$ even a new version of Windows or
Office or whatever seems to be typically 18 months late. A fundamental new
technology may take _years_ to see its release as a commercially viable
product and I for one would like to see a new innovative idea implemented
properly in the first place rather than a half baked implementation going on
the market and causing all kinds of headaches in the long run.

Having said this I'm no great defender of software patents in general. The
old rule was you couldn't patent software, although any underlying algorithms
were fair game.

The example given in one of the original 'complaint' posts was the
underlying 'algorithm' to 'time dependent' application keys.

Just curious if that meets your criteria as an acceptable one.

That sounds fair enough to me. But now the line in this and
a lot of other patent areas seems to be being re-drawn (it seems to be the US
in particular that's pushing this through). IMHO its this 'patent-creep'
that's causing much of the controversy at the moment.

I'd be interested to hear an example of what you mean.

Btw, I've noticed that some people are mixing copyright with patent, and
they're not the same thing.

 

[David Maynard]

Okay sorry, it doesn't mention mice. Telegraph, mouse, PDA,
whatever---same concept: dots and dashes.

You're contending that since a telegraph key is pressed momentarily to make
dots and dashes that nothing using key depressions can ever again be a
patentable idea? Isn't that a bit like saying that since Gog, the caveman,
banged on tree logs to communicate that the telegraph isn't patentable?

The fact that that patent was issued and still stands indicates that the
patent system is seriously broken.

I might simply mean that no one cared enough to challenge it. And, given
the length of time it takes to get anything into a court, it might mean
it's still sitting on a docket somewhere.

Of course, just because you wish you could use it too doesn't mean it
shouldn't be patentable.

The patent system is one of the main reasons for American economic,
technological, and military success, which is why there are so many
forces trying to ruin it, and having considerable success. There is no
way I would want to abolish the patent system, but patent policy has
been going seriously wrong for some years now.

I know we like to think the U.S. is responsible for everything but it
didn't originate the notion of patents. At the very least it goes back to
15'th century England.

 

[Matt]

You're contending that since a telegraph key is pressed momentarily to
make dots and dashes that nothing using key depressions can ever again
be a patentable idea? Isn't that a bit like saying that since Gog, the
caveman, banged on tree logs to communicate that the telegraph isn't
patentable?

The essential element here is using the time-dependence of the key
depression as a code, not the thing (mouse, telegraph, etc.) that uses
that element. As I understand it, somebody tried to patent the first
pencil with an eraser on the end. The patent was denied because it was
seen as a trivial combination of existing inventions.

I might not object to the Morse code being patented because it required
some statistical analysis that led to efficiency of the code. And
everybody was free to use some other code.

It looks like this MS patent either tries to own the idea of using a
time-dependent binary signal as a code or tries to own a trivial
combination of existing inventions.

 

[David Maynard]

The essential element here is using the time-dependence of the key
depression as a code, not the thing (mouse, telegraph, etc.) that uses
that element.

Well, the "hardware button" is a part of it. As well as being an
"application button."

As I understand it, somebody tried to patent the first
pencil with an eraser on the end. The patent was denied because it was
seen as a trivial combination of existing inventions.

Could be. I'm not familiar with it.

The question always is, if it was so 'trivial' then how come no one was
doing it before me?

I might not object to the Morse code being patented because it required
some statistical analysis that led to efficiency of the code.

It did? So an original 'inefficient' code would not be patentable?
(actually, my example was the telegraph, not morse code, and I don't know
for sure you can patent a 'code' or if that's a copyright kind of thing.)

I don't think that 'efficiency', or even practicality, is a consideration
as there are plenty of inefficient and impractical wacky things patented.
The market sorts those things out.

And
everybody was free to use some other code.

I don't think that's a consideration either. "I'm sorry Otto but you can't
patent your gasoline engine because there are no alternate gasoline powered
engines one is free to use." Actually, he lost his patent because there
*was* one.

It looks like this MS patent either tries to own the idea of using a
time-dependent binary signal as a code or tries to own a trivial
combination of existing inventions.

I'm probably not a good judge of what the 'minimum' criteria is as, judging
from some I've seen, I've missed a slew of patent opportunities with things
I consider simply solving the problem at hand.

 

[Matt]

I'm probably not a good judge of what the 'minimum' criteria is as,
judging from some I've seen, I've missed a slew of patent opportunities
with things I consider simply solving the problem at hand.

Well that's just it. The laws should be such that people don't think
about patenting small solutions to problems at hand. Something is wrong
when applying for and obtaining the patent is more work than the
invention itself.

 

[Nicholas Buenk]

Monoplies are bad because they provide the consumer with no choice, how come
you don't accept that universally accepted idea?