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PanIP May Be Standing On Shaky Ground 261

Posted by timothy from the port-in-a-storm dept.
GoatEnigma writes "You may remember the name PanIP, the company trying to hold e-commerce hostage with their patents. Well, according to this update on the PanIP Defendants site, it might not be as easy as they thought. Apparently a little bit of successful legal opposition has slowed down their nefarious scheme. Tim claims to have found evidence to undermine their patents, although the article is very short on details as to what this evidence might be..."
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PanIP May Be Standing On Shaky Ground More

PanIP May Be Standing On Shaky Ground

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  • Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:28PM (#6800162)
    Tim claims to have found evidence to undermine their patents, although the article is very short on details as to what this evidence might be...

    Duh. Obviously, they found it had been copied from SCO source.

    • Re:Obviously... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It seems every new overused slashdot joke gets old faster than the last.

  • Patents are wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:29PM (#6800166) Journal
    Ideas should be Free.

    The holding hostage of ideas is completely contrary to the basic natural rights that ideas have. The GPL is one way of fighting for the rights of software, but there really isn't a way to fight for the freedom of ideas.

    In this century, the war to free ideas from patents will be waged as long and hard as the war a century ago against slavery. Information slavery is still slavery.

    Ideas have rights.

    • Re:Patents are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:35PM (#6800213) Homepage Journal
      So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?

      If somebody wants to give me $50k/yr for the next 10 years, I'll be happy to expound upon how wonderful it would be to not have to earn a living

      until year 11 that is...

      • Re:Patents are wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bourne ( 539955 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @09:34PM (#6801018)

        So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?

        Dame Rumor says he implemented. I recall hearing back in '94-'96 or so that he commanded a very hefty hourly rate for consulting, mostly extending emacs and the like for companies that wanted useful tools.

        Of course, I understand a lot of that went straight back into FSF. I did confuse him for a bum (sorry, but that's truth) when I first saw him, so he clearly wasn't spending much on himself.

        That's the rumor. How true it is, I have no idea...

        • He also sold hardcopy manuals. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @10:14PM (#6801256) Journal
          So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?

          Dame Rumor says he implemented. I recall hearing back in '94-'96 or so that he commanded a very hefty hourly rate for consulting, mostly extending emacs and the like for companies that wanted useful tools.

          He also sold hardcopy manuals for emacs - first printer output, then paperback.

          They were actually a hardcopy of the softcopy manual that was packaged in the distribution. But having a hardcopy was convenient, and a lot of emacs users didn't have a printer and/or had to pay big per-page fees for output in those days - and/or wanted to support Stallman and were willing to contrubte a few bucks.

          I think I actually bought one from him in those days. But I didn't end up using emacs, due to RAM limitations on my machines up through the time that I had vi hardwired in my nervous system's firmware. So if I did get one "It's Filed" - in the Ted Nelson sense of buried in the midden. B-)

      • Re:Patents are wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Nucleon500 ( 628631 ) <tcfelker@example.com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @10:07PM (#6801211) Homepage
        There's nothing wrong with controlling your expression of an idea (copyright). Just not the idea itself.
        • Patents are useful for certain "inventions" that take a large investment to create, and are actually "new" inventions. Most new drugs are very deserving of patent protection.

          Software, on the otherhand, should not be patentable, any more than a math algorithm is patentable.

          As for copyright, I support limited copyright. I personally think 20 years is a good term for ALL copyrighted works.

          • I agree with this. An interesting idea, however, would be to make drugs, and perhaps even DNA, copyrightable instead of patentable. So for example, the idea of inhibiting a certain enzyme would be unprotected, but the actual chemical that can do this would be. This would encourage people to find different chemicals that have similar effects, perhaps with fewer side effects. Natural DNA could be public domain, but you could own copyright (not patent) on modifications. Of course, when applied to drug com

    • Excuse me while I hurl (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DaveAtFraud ( 460127 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @08:13PM (#6800483) Homepage Journal
      The concept of intellectual property was created so that people and companies who invest in the creation of new "things" could re-coup their development investment. This is true for writers, artists, inventors, R&D departments, etc. Some, such as trademark laws, were created to protect consumers from unscupulous people providing fraudulent imitations of recognized products (i.e., they are *VERY GOOD* for consumers).

      Patents and copyrights were intended to provide an incentive for people to create new things. As an example, if I am an author, what is my incentive to continue to write if my works can be freely copied? Likewise, why should a pharmaceutical comapany work to discover, refine and test a new medecine if the moment it comes out anyone else can make their own copy of it without incurring the development costs?

      Intellectual property laws are a necessity for modern society. Sadly, some people like SCO and PanIP have subverted those laws to try to gain from works they had nothing to do with. Luckily for the open source community, the ambulance chasers at SCO were stupid enough to go after somebody big instead of being bottom feeders like PanIP and just hitting little guys for licensing fees.

      • Re:Excuse me while I hurl (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @08:52PM (#6800734)
        The concept of intellectual property was created so that people and companies who invest in the creation of new "things" could re-coup their development investment. This is true for writers, artists, inventors, R&D departments, etc. Some, such as trademark laws, were created to protect consumers from unscupulous people providing fraudulent imitations of recognized products (i.e., they are *VERY GOOD* for consumers).

        Close, but not quite. These laws were created so that people would create new things - and that after they'ed recouped cost + some profit, those things would flow into the public domain.

      • if I am an author, what is my incentive to continue to write if my works can be freely copied?

        I think your incentive to create would depend on two factors:

        1. Are you close to starving and being homeless?
        2. Are you excessively greedy?

        If starving, then of course you have a disincentive to write fulltime given the knowledge that no one will trade you money/food for your work; a dayjob would suck up much of your time. If on the other hand you're already well off, then only excessive greed would be the disincen

        • Well look at it this way, look at it from the perspective of a company that does produce lots of innovations through pure research labs like Monsanto, Phizer or Du Pont. Research is expensive and takes a long time. Drug research literally takes years and years then years more of testing and usually costs billions of dollars. Now, they have to make that back somehow. Well, if everyone can freely manufacture that new drug, this will be impossible. Why? Well because the other companies will have no upfront R
          • Again the "drugs need patents" theory might be ok, but the practice is abused (actually I don't think the theory stands up, but that is a much longer, more convoluted debate!)

            By creating false monopolies in certain markets we allow monopolistic practices and huge economic waste.

            Let's say you are Monsanto, you have a patent on drug Z for 14 years. You have no competition and so you get to set the price. Now, your instinct will not be to recoup the research plus 12% profit over 14 years, it will be to set t

          • Now, they have to make that back somehow. Well, if everyone can freely manufacture that new drug, this will be impossible.

            Oh no, those poor people can't make money if the government doesn't protect them from the poor evil copycats.

            There is no way that someone who comes up with the cure for cancer won't make money, regardless of who copies it. For one, there is the process to make the drug, which is usually not protected by copyright law. You know how to make it because you came up with the drug, nobody

          • Monsanto? You mean the company that wasted their innovation on finding a way to create a corn that they could claim as IP so it could no longer be grown and replanted like corn since the dawn of history? Sorry, but despite a past history of innovations, such behavior and abuse of the patent system leaves me with no sympathy or respect for the companies you cite.
        • I'm a working stiff. I put in my 40 hours plus at my day job and I run a small internet site over an ISDN line to keep up my current skills and learn new ones so I stay employed. This keeps me rather busy plus I've been running a development Linux kernel since the low 2.5.20s because I also want to learn about the kernel. Somehwere out of all the things I've been doing I could probably come up with material for a book but it would probably mean investigating things I'm not really all that interested in o

      • Corn farmers... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sleepingsquirrel ( 587025 ) * <{Greg.Buchholz} ... ingsquirrel.org}> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @09:16PM (#6800883) Homepage Journal
        Intellectual property laws are a necessity for modern society. Take corn farmers for example. What incentive would farmers have to plant corn and sell it without IP laws? How would they recoup their initial R&D? Surely, there would be only one customer ever and that customer would buy just one solitary kernel. The buyer could merely throw the seed into the ground and with no work of his own (effortless copying), he would have access to a 100 copies of unlicensed derivative corn kernel IP in the matter of a few short months. In fact, the buyer now has complete access to the very same self-replicating nanotechnlogy that the farmer had. The buyer could then give away the corn IP to a friend or neighbor or (gasp!) even try to sell it for a profit. The ease of copying is the major problem with corn and encryption methods haven't been sucessful so far. Agriculture is one of the major industry in this country and we'd all hate to see it destroyed because of a handful of out-of-control corn pirates. So surely you can see there is no way farmers would even consider growing corn until we have strong government enforced monolopolies in corn.
        • So, how many GHz is that corn stalk? Oh, it doesn't.

          So, what diseases does your corn stalk cure? Oh, it doesn't.

          So, how many people are entertained by watching your corn stalk grow? Oh, not many.

          So, how many people does your corn stalk seat and how fast does it do 0 to 60? Oh, it doesn't.

          So, what diminished costs do the corn pirates face if they buy some of my corn and plant it? No cost of owning the farm to grow it on? No fertilizer? No harvesting costs? No silage costs? Oh, they're the same u

          • Re:Corn farmers... (Score:5, Informative)

            by arkanes ( 521690 ) <<arkanes> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday August 27, 2003 @06:45AM (#6803339) Homepage
            His retort is actually suprisingly topical, since IP patents have allowed Monsato to sue farmers for growing corn. Oh, you didn't know that corn was patented?
          • So, how many people does that Pentium 4/polio vaccine/movie/sports car feed? Oh, that's what I thought.

            So, what diminished costs do music pirates face ? Do they have no computer to decode the mp3? No hard drive to store the mp3? No opportunity costs involved in finding the mp3 in the first place? No network costs? No cost cd-r's to burn them to? Why exactly can't the record companies harness the same technology that makes digital music so inexpensive to distribute on an ad-hoc basis? And exactly

        • Almost, but not even close...

          To grow corn with some success and in any sort of really "usable" quantity (a stalk of corn gets you fed for what, a day?), it requires considerable effort, thought, and planning. Obviously you've never been a farmer if you think that all there is to growing corn is dropping a kernel into the ground and watching it grow.

          For example, what kind of soil are you trying to grow corn in? Try planting that kernel in the desert. Or in a peat-bog. So, if you live in a desert and yo
    • They are just over applied. They are good because they enable the inventor of a revolutonary idea to make money, even if he doens't have the means himself to exploit it.

      Like say you invent a process for making a room temperature superconductor. This is an idea worth a lot to a lot of people. You deserve to make money off of it, given that you did something truly innovative to come up with it (it isn't like people haven't been trying). But suppose to mass produce these thigns it will take a $4 billion fabri
    • This is what the Constitution says:


      "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"

      As an earlier post mentioned, this brief period of time gives someone an incentive to develop new technologies and intangible works because they can recoup their large investments with a short monopoly period.

      What we have now is virtual perpetual patents and copyrights which promotes nothing but

    • "The holding hostage of ideas is completely contrary to the basic natural rights that ideas have. The GPL is one way of fighting for the rights of software, but there really isn't a way to fight for the freedom of ideas."

      Without IP, there's no GPL, only public domain. The GPL itself relies on copyright law to produce a contract that limits what you can do with the source code you've copied, limited in ways that the designers of the GPL thought would most greatly encourage sharing of source code.
    • Go a few more steps. Data should have rights. Please forward all yours to me. Free the data!

      My ideas are mine to do what I will with. If I wish to hoard them, and not share them with you, that should be my right. I owe my ideas nothing. In fact, I can think up all kinds of ways to benefit humanity, and still have no obligation to share them with you. They are MY ideas, to examine, refine, and ponder over on long sleepless nights.

      Conversely, I don't think someone should be allowed to call shotgun on
    • Stallman said arguing about "Intellectual Property Laws" is not definitive enough.

      GPL involves copyright laws, and not ideas per se.

      Patent laws protect inventions, but not ideas. They also protect Business Methods, but this was as a result of evolution through case outcomes, much like they are used in cases involving software, thanks to some case law involving IBM a while ago.

      Patent law is being used to the benefit of the cleverest (draw your own conclusions as to what "cleverest" implies), but this does
    • Ideas should be Free.

      Right, but implementations should be patentable.

      I can't say, "Gee, I made a machine that mills cotton," and then prevent anyone from milling cotton - I get protection on my machine so people can't rip it off.

      Even in pharmaceuticals, you can get a patent on a drug that treats asthma, but you can't get a patent on treating asthma.

      Similarly, I should be able to patent a system for purchasing items with a single click - so people can't rip it off. What I'm not supposed to do is get a
  • then why not a generic commerce patent? Should the person that first started selling water be able to patent that? Should I be able to patent overclocking graphing calculators as a business?

    Whatever happened to the 20% different dealy, whereby eBay isn't affected because its code (the way it works) is 20%(100%?) different from the subject of the patent? This is why software patents are so moronic, any re-implimentation works differently, or falls under the original copyright.

    SCO's gone, let's all DoS the patent office next!

  • Reexamination usually doesn't invalidate patents (Score:5, Informative)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:36PM (#6800224) Journal
    What usually happens with reexamination is that the patent office works with the party who received the patent, to narrow the scope of the claims. This unfortunately usually doesn't let one off the hook, as the claims can be narrowed, but still be focused on the infringement in question.

    The other problem with reexamination is what happens to all the documentation submitted to the PTO to cause the reexamination to happen. If the patent is allowed to stand but the scope of the claims is narrowed, the new documents are added to the list of 'known prior art' in the patent. These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete -- as the PTO has in effect 'blessed' those documents, asserting that the patent is valid in spite of them.

    So, reexamination is a double edged sword. You may end up with stronger patent, and all of your best ammunition voided.

    IANAL, but I have fought a couple of patents. Won one and lost one.

    thad

    • Re:Reexamination usually doesn't invalidate patent (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The patent outlines a system defined by gibberish that probably wouldn't be possible to build back in what - 1987 - and seems to be a typical attempt at obfuscating what the system actually does. As far as I can tell, it's a patent for the business process of selling something using a computer. In theory a cash register is prior art, but I get your double-edged sword point... ;o)

      Personally, I think it should just be made an offence to reap money from patents if it's your only source of revenue - AFAIK, the
      • "Heck, do these guys expect everyone to read the patent office library before we start coding?"

        Reading patents is dangerous buisness. For pretty much any computer program a programmer is ever likely to write he is very likely to violate one or more patents in the process. The way the system is set up today it's close to impossible to avoid it, with all the overbroad and/or trivial patents granted.

        If you read and know about the patents you are engaging in willful violation and you can be liable for larger
    • These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete -- as the PTO has in effect 'blessed' those documents, asserting that the patent is valid in spite of them.

      Is it this clear cut? Can't you still attempt to have a court overturn a patent, by (in effect) challenging the Patent Office's ruling about the novelness and non-obvious of the invention? Surely any prior art may be relevant to this, whether "known" to the PTO or not?

  • Good job guys (Score:4, Informative)

    by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:37PM (#6800229) Homepage
    Thanks for standing up to the playgound bullies. It's good to hear someone from my hometown puting up a fight. It is also slightly refreshing to hear that the system is actually starting to work the way it should.

    If anyone here is looking for an excellent source for fine chocolate, check out Tim Beere's "patent infringing" website, Debrand Fine Chocolate [debrand.com].
    • That is an excellent point. The system does work when the two sides in opposition have semi-even economic resources (at least for the fight). This should encourage other small business owners to form loose alliances when this need arises again.

  • Brazen (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:38PM (#6800240)
    When you think about it, calling a company created solely to milk patents "PanIP" is pretty up-front in a sick kind of way. I probably would have gone with "Screw You Patents Inc." but perhaps that's taken. Maybe "Bendover Patents". Hmm.

  • Prior art? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by woodsnick ( 628525 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @07:52PM (#6800332)
    I'm guessing that someone out there might know. Were there any BBS's in the late 80's early 90's that were conducting some sort of business through their systems that might invalidate some of these remote electronic commerce claims? I'll admit to not reading the patent claims, but I'd guess someone must have conducted some remote electronic business transactions before these guys came along. Anyone have any more info?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Definitely prior art (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jesup ( 8690 ) *
      In addition to Compuserve and the like, PlayNet (the software for which later became AOL after it was ported to the PC by Quantum (now AOL)) had a very developed merchandise purchase system. Note that this was not per se over the internet; users dialed into Telenet or Tymnet X25 pads, and then connected to our servers via Telenet/Tymnet's network. You could view images, select colors, etc, and payment was via your CC account. This was all developed in the circa '85 timeframe.

      Note: I was the person who co
  • I noticed on their page that they...

    a.)Had gotten a judgement for 19000 against PanIP.

    b.)Wanted donations to cover their expenses.

    So these some 15 or 20 companies didn't feel like they benifited sufficiently from their investment? Granted a judgement does not a payment make and I'd be interested in donating (in spite of my poverty) but...... I think they'd see a lot of nickels and dimes (mine included )if there was more detailed info on whats been done (the court action and created jurisprudence i
    • You seem to be accusing the respondents of profiteering from thier misfortune. I have a hard time accepting that.

      It just might be that they can't release the info you want due to the advise of thier counsel, or perhaps even a court order. Most businessmen are ethical, honest and forthright, it's only when the figures get too large that we end up with the Darly McBrides of the world. As well, they seem to have good counsel - which I'm sure will cost them in excess of $19K.

      Give them that nickel or dime, dud
    • The $19,000 was because the judge awarded them legal fees - and this was for a completely separate case, where PanIP was suing them for defamation and trademark infringement by naming their organization the "PanIP Group Defense Fund". Additionally, there was no mention of punitive damages, so we can only assume that their lawyer's fees were approx. $19,000.

      Which leaves them back at $0 that they've actually made from the PanIP mess, plus a whole slew of other legal fees from the original (and still ongoi

  • Someone patented Bartering? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @08:29PM (#6800577) Homepage Journal
    "No. 5,794,207, for Priceline.com's buyer-driven, name-your-price E-commerce system"

    Now IANAL but how do you patent the bartering system. Are you saying that the consumer has to pay royalties for neogeoating a better price with a company?

    Someone needs to reign in the USPTO very quickly before this all begins to get out of hand. What are we to do when your legal system is overwhelmed with lawsuits that real crimes such as theft and murder begin to take a back seat to big business lawsuits making the lawyers millions of dollars.

    Or what if it becomes so lucrative (Probably has already happened) that lawyers wont represent the defendants and instead concentrate on convincing companies with patents that other companies are violating their IP and that sueing is something they should do.

    This all falls back to SCO (Just an Example) instead of producing a workable product they've relied on litigation to sustain the company. It's beyond me why any worker at SCO (Other than our current economic situation) would stay with a company that could find itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. It's like the Enron situation has not driven it home to them yet.

    But again I ask people to write their congressmen and women and all their other elected officials and point out the problems inherent with patenting many things the way it goes on.

    Business is just that business. I can understand patenting a process to make a 5 dollar diamond processor and a special chemical forumlae that cures cancer it's in their interest to make money after investing millions in developing these products. But patenting things such as door to door salesmanship or basic E Commerce systems is just damaging to the E-Economy.

    If anyone deserved any patents it's the designers of the coding systems such as Basic, C, C++, C#, PHP and myraid of other languages. Of which none were expressly written with 2 billion ways to write code that would say yes or no. If we continue this madness then someone might as well patent the 0 and the 1 while they're at it.
    • Except that what you described isn't bartering at all, it's haggling.

      barter (bartr)
      v. intr. To trade goods or services without the exchange of money.
      v. tr. To trade (goods or services) without the exchange of money.

      I know this is entirely irrelevant to your point, I'm just being a nitpicky prick today.

  • Tim claims to have found evidence to undermine their patents, although the article is very short on details as to what this evidence might be...

    A lot of that going around these days, isn't there?

    I'm wondering what implications all this top-secret evidence non-sense will have in the long run. Are we soon going to see court cases where all of the evidence is secret? "Releasing that evidence to the court would violate our IP rights. You will just have to take our word for it that things look bad for the

  • I think that the length of a patent should reflect the amount of development costs.

    If something has no development cost or cost to test etc., then the patent length is 1 year. You'd have to create a sliding scale up to a max of 20 years. (Should be 5 for software)

    The patent office whould be the judge, I suppose, so they'd have to hire a pile of accountants to be able to investigate and dismiss inflated costs.

    If software patents keep going like they are, the industry will grind to a halt where nobody wil

  • Really not surprising that their claims are shaky (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @09:12PM (#6800840) Homepage Journal
    After all, they're shaking down the small fry who can't afford a lawsuit. If they had an iron clad claim they'd go after Amazon and other big fish; or at least mid sized companies instead of mom and pops. It's the lawyer equivalent of muggers preying on the elderly: not much money, but not much risk either.

  • Modern Day Pirates (Score:3, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@RABBIT ... minus herbivore> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @09:16PM (#6800873) Homepage
    I wonder what kind of punitive litigation, if any, would be possible against PanIP. Assuming their patent claims get discredited, could the plaintiffs convince a court to treat PanIP like modern-day pirates? The phrase "hoist them by their nards" sounds good to me.

  • Did anyone ever patent the mail-order catalog (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @09:39PM (#6801064)
    Patenting the idea of selling stuff over the internet seems like the modern version of patenting the idea of a mail order catalog. I wonder if anyone ever patented this idea, and if so, was able to make money off of the patent. It seems like an absurd thing to be able to patent, but who knows..

  • Patents hurting the ecconomy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @11:01PM (#6801472) Homepage Journal
    Patents were the idea of protecting a persons inventon so they could shop it around and sell it to a company for mass production.

    Here is the problem. Software is already protected by copyrights the "inventions" of software are mearly an elegent solution to a problem and not the byproduct of research or hard work as much as the byproduct of a good nights sleep and waking up with a "Hay I got an idea"

    Most inventions start with an idea but they end with labor and resorces. Software starts with an idea and ends with an idea only temporarly taking the form of 4 lines of code.

    Then you have business method patents. The only thing more pathetic than a business protecting it's method of business as it's own intelectual property is a kid who identifys himself by a catch phrase and gets pissed when someone else uses the same combonation of words.

    Back to classic inventions. The hard, fast and real devices. The lightbulb is an invention. It took research to figure out how to do it. The DC power plant is an invention. The AC power plant is annother invention. The AC power grid. Etc.

    The reason for submitting a working device to the patent office is becouse the inventer had done real science. A practical aplication form of science but science never the less.

    Todays true inventions are protected by trade secrets and non-discolsure agreements. Thies are far more powerful than patents.

    Todays patents are much thess than great inventions but random trinketts. The patent system needs more than just an overhall. It needs a vacation.
    • I forgot to add.
      While we patent thies trinkets many of them are insainly obveous and some were in the public domain.
      It's just today people file simple obveous patents by doing something in the form of...
      "Selling Donuts on the Internet" for example.

      Nothing new or remarkably diffrent from what's already happening in the real world.

      Many patents are nothing more than looking at market trends and figuring out what will come next and then patent it while some other poor slob actually makes the thing just to get
    • Somewhat shorter:

      In order for some idea to be patentable. it most have a unique, functional, tangible expression and it must truly be innovative (not otherwise exist).

      I think you'll find that this nicely leaves out patent abominations such as software and business practices. Software is sufficiently protected by copyright. Business practices have not been subject of intellectual property law until recently. Including them under any form of IP is a mistake.

      I disagree with your comment about trade secre

  • Okay, I'm not really trying to say that this is a hoax or anything. It's just... the name Pangea Intellectual Properties is difficult to believe. I mean that's the kind of name the antagonist would have in a movie about IP litigation. Basically, they're saying, right there in their name,
    "ALL YOUR IP ARE BELONG TO US!"

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