Patent Insanity:3-31-04 Amazon Gets Patent For Browser Cookies

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: chess9
Dave:

We know the patent isn't legit 'cause Al Gore invented the internet.

-Robert

The patent isnt legit. It like many other patent apps get approved because of a system that is arcane, extremely slow, and extremely understaffed.

No, No No Digit, that can't be, when I said that last year the AT experts said the system is perfectly fine and not understaffed either. How can they be understaffed with the way the Government is spending money faster than water?

Thos people are experts too and couldn't possibly have the wool pulled over their eyes either.

 

[dmcowen674]

More Patent Insanity:

Small San Diego Company says Patent for Onboard CPU Clock Speed Control belongs to them, they have filed suit aginst 5 PC builders with Intel based CPU's, Intel files Countersuit to try and help it's customers:

2-7-2004 Pentium PC Vendors Face Chip Patent Suit

Patriot Scientific, a small, San Diego-based seller of embedded microprocessors for automotive and scientific applications, is suing Sony, Fujitu, Matsushita, Toshiba, and NEC, alleging infringement of a Patriot patent for what it calls "fundamental microprocessor technology."

That technology resides in Intel's Pentium microprocessor. Patriot is targeting the five systems vendors because they ship desktops and laptops equipped with the Intel chip. The patent at issue involves on-chip clocking technology.

 

[dmcowen674]

2-9-2004 Small California Company Granted Patent For Streaming Video Takes Websites To Court

A federal court in California on Friday began the onerous task of determining whether a small high-tech firm owns the patents on how most video and audio is sent over the Internet.

U.S. District Court Judge James Ware on Friday held the first of what could be several hearings to determine if Acacia owns broad video- and audio-streaming patents. A decision could take months, legal experts say.

Last year, Acacia began targeting dozens of companies to pay license fees. It secured royalties of 1% to 4% from adult Web sites, music sites and cable operators. Hustler, General Dynamics and Virgin Radio are among its more than 100 licensees.

If Acacia is successful, Goldberg warns, non-porn industries would also be affected - from cable and satellite providers to companies with streaming media such as America Online and RealNetworks. "It's online taxation without representation," Goldberg says. "It would have a chilling effect."

Acacia's case not only could shake up sites that stream video and audio, but it underscores flaws in the U.S. patent system, say government officials and business executives.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded about 180,000 patents in 2002, nearly twice what it did in 1990. Another 500,000 patent applications await approval.

The rapid proliferation of patent awards can sometimes lead to broad, murky patents - especially for software and Internet technology, which account for 15% of all patents, patent lawyers say.

Consequently, the Federal Trade Commission last year recommended stricter patent-approval standards.

 

[dmcowen674]

3-6-2004 U.S. Patent Office reverses on Eolas Plug-In Patent Grant, Microsoft Off Hook For 500 Million dollars

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday March 06, @10:33AM
from the surprise-turn-of-events dept.
theodp writes "The USPTO has issued a preliminary decision invalidating Eolas' claim to Web browser technology central to a case against Microsoft, which could save the software giant more than half a billion dollars in damages. If upheld, this also means Microsoft will not be required to make changes that would have crippled IE's ability to work with plug-ins like QuickTime and Flash. Eolas has 60 days to respond to the decision. The USPTO has only invalidated 151 patents out of nearly 4 million patents awarded since 1988."

 

[dmcowen674]

AOL now on the Hook for Millions for Copyright Infringments on it's Network:

3-6-2004 AOL Declared Not under "Safe Harbor" for DMCA Copyright Lawsuits

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 06, @02:01PM
from the no-forwarding-address dept.
Robotech_Master writes "An appeals court has issued a decision reversing the summary judgment of a lower court that AOL qualified as a "safe harbor" under the DMCA. At issue is the fact that Ellison sent his notification of copyright violation to an email address at AOL, which AOL never received because the abuse submission address had been changed." The complete decision is available here as a PDF file; read below for an excerpt.


"AOL changed its contact e-mail address from "copyright@aol.com" to "aolcopyright@aol.com" in the fall of 1999, but waited until April 2000 to register the change with the U.S. Copyright Office. Moreover, AOL failed to configure the old e-mail address so that it would either forward messages to the new address or return new messages to their senders. In the meantime, complaints such as Ellison's went unheeded, and complainants were not notified that their messages had not been delivered. Furthermore, there is evidence in the record suggesting that a phone call from AOL subscriber John J. Miller to AOL should have put AOL on notice of the infringing activity on the particular USENET group at issue in this case, "alt.binaries.e-book." Miller contacted AOL to report the existence of unauthorized copies of works by various authors. Because there is evidence indicating that AOL changed its e-mail address in an unreasonable manner and that AOL should have been on notice of infringing activity we conclude that a reasonable trier of fact could find that AOL had reason to know of potentially infringing activity occurring within its USENET network."

 

[dmcowen674]

Kodak can't make money the old fashoined way so might as well sue to make money:

3-9-2004 Kodak Sues Sony Over Digital Camera Patents

Rochester, New York-based Kodak in a suit filed in a New York Federal Court alleged that Sony's products use technology invented by Kodak, including an "electronic camera utilizing image compression and digital storage."

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against further use of the technology and monetary damages.

Kodak already has licensing agreement with rival camera makers Olympus Corp. (7733.T) and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. (6764.T)
----------------------------------------------------------------
They already successfully bullied Olympus & Sanyo.

 

[dmcowen674]

3-18-2004 Trump Seeks to Trademark 'You're Fired!'

The patent office granted 185,000 trademark applications in the last fiscal year. Applications take about a year to process.

Trump might have competition: A search of the PTO's database revealed that three other applications for "You're fired" have been filed.

 

[dmcowen674]

Company claims patent over online testing, wants thousands of Universities to pay thousands in Royalties:

From the issue dated March 26, 2004

<http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i29/29a03101.htm>

## Company Claims to Own Online Testing

A patent holder demands fees from colleges that use a common tool
of distance education

### By DAN CARNEVALE

When Regis University put some of its courses online in the 1990s,
officials there figured that it was a no-brainer to administer tests
online as well. And so they did.

Last fall, however, they received a threatening letter from Test
Central Inc., which holds a patent on various types of online
testing. The company claims that Regis and other colleges may be
infringing on that patent and, if so, must pay thousands of dollars
to continue offering tests online.

Ellen K. Waterman, director of distance learning at the Denver
institution, says she was stunned to see that somebody claimed to own
the rights to online testing itself. The patent claims made by Test
Central are so broad, she says, that they seem to cover any type of
testing in cyberspace.

"It's very, very general," she says. "If you can patent anything that
people do on the Web, we are not protected at all."

But Test Central officials see things differently. They say that the
patent does not necessarily cover all online testing and that they
are entitled to be paid fees by any college conducting testing that
is covered. And if they suspect a college of infringing on the
patent, they may take the college to court.

"There are many organizations out there who have made a ton of money
off of the technology that we've got a patent on," says James J.
Posch, chief executive officer of Test Central and of its parent
company, Test.com. "Our concern is that other people are profiting at
our expense."

Some of the colleges that received letters from Test Central, based
in Cleveland, have not yet decided how to respond, while others -- as
well as companies that also provide online-testing tools to colleges
-- plan to fight back.

Test Central's letters went out to an undetermined number of colleges
soon after another technology company, Acacia, put colleges and
businesses on notice that they might be violating its patent on
streaming video technology ( The Chronicle, November 7).

Together, the two companies' claims have led college officials to
worry that many more companies could make their own claims to
ownership of Internet processes. Such claims, the educators say,
could threaten the viability of distance-education programs.

"This is like Pandora's box has opened," says Sally Johnstone,
executive director of the Western Cooperative for Educational
Telecommunications of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher
Education, or WICHE. "Everybody thinks they can get a piece of the
action because they had an idea at one time."

[...]


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Lorenzo Hall, SIMS PhD Student; UC Berkeley.
[web:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/>, blog:<http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb>


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[dmcowen674]

All your Cookies belong to Us. Amazon granted Patent for Browser Cookies:

3-31-2004 Amazon Patents Cookies

Amazon.com has been awarded a patent for browser cookie use. Patent Number 6,714,926, granted only yesterday, covers the "Use of browser cookies to store structured data".

Just a year after the company came under fire for their patenting of "one-click shopping", Amazon found themselves sued by software company Open Market in February. Open Market claims Amazon violated their own patents 5,909,492 and 5,715,314, which focus on the concept of using a "shopping cart" so shoppers can accumulate purchases pre-checkout.

Patent reform, anyone?

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: SuperTool

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
Business model:

Patent some obvious "new technology"
Keep quiet about the patent and wait for companies to make huge profits using the "new technology"
Years later, sue those companies
Profit!

What's wrong with this picture?

Unisys (gif), Rambus (sdram), Microsoft (FAT), SCO (unix) don't think there is anything wrong with the picture

Rambus actually began their stuff rather timely, and did in fact come up with much of the technology.
The other three...<nelson voice>Ha ha!</nelson>