Patent troll sues Oprah, Sony over online book viewing An IP-squatting firm is suing Oprah Winfrey's production company and Sony Electronics over patent infringement for using and promoting software that displays books on the internet. Illinois Computer Research claims Oprah's Bookclub violates its US Patent 7,11,252 - a method of "Enhancing touch and feel on the internet." The …
Punter: "Hi! I'm selling something! Here's a description, and a preview!"
Lawyers: "You can't do that ... we have a Patent!"
The mind boggles ... What's next, is this group of idiots going to sue the newspapers of the world for printing classifieds? Or (hopefully) they will win, and there will be no more ads on TV or radio ...
As I said, silly.
Much as I wouldn't mind seeing anything to do with Oprah (all-time most annoying woman on TV) taking a kicking, I can't see heavyweights like Amazon sitting quietly in the corner and letting this parasite build a possible precedence case to come at them with later. I suspect Amazon would be quite happy to provide extensive evidence of prior art.
...before the rest of the world tells the US to roll its half-arsed patent system up, coat it in Vaseline and put it in the appropriate storage? Seems to me that any company or individual wanting to launch something even vaguely innovative would do well to avoid The Land Of The Free (TM) as grasping chancers like this guy who would push ROI through the floor in a couple of months.
Paris because... well, Vaseline...
"A system for enabling touch and feel over the internet provides a three-dimensional representation of a good being sold, that three-dimensional representation being viewable from a number of different directions."
I can't see how this is interesting when dealing with books, but it's simple enough to set up a service as discussed in the article without going fancy 3D. Why the hell would you? Also, wtf do they even mean by "touch and feel"? I'm pretty sure I don't get a haptic interface when reading through Kindle.
I seem to remember someone had patented patent trolling *searches* [url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/halliburton_patent/]haha![/url] And if you read [url=http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080270152&OS=20080270152&RS=20080270152]this[/url] it's clear that suing Oprah and Sony is a violation of Halliburtons intellectual property. Should we warn them??
I feel I'm in the wrong universe sometimes. Does any of this actually make sense to the natives?
Paris, as a counter weight to this madness...
Well seeing as how they lost nothing, having never had any intention of producing anything with their "IP", they can go fuck themselves.
If you ever wanted to see why the people hold the legal system in such comtempt, then this would be a good example.
has anyone yet patented the act of filing for patents? surely a money spinner to fill the coffers of all patent trolls out there. Seriously though, how do these patents get through? Don't you have to have an actual product you have made anymore? just the vaguest of ideas? Is this the basis for the term 'patently absurd'?
No comments about them.
But laws should be changed to avoid the possibility of patent trolling, methinks. These scums who buy patents just to sue are parasites, and as such must be "exterminated". Aren't patents supposed to give incentive to innovation and all that? So, if you hold a patent but do not produce or demonstrate research on anything based on the patent (let's say, after a certain amount of time), then you should either not be able to sue to enforce it (because that's stifling innovation and production, just the opposite of the "spirit of the law"). Or, preferably, lose it.
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