Posts by Blue Sky Pen

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

So I guess its full DNS and http element blocking then. Ads are not just annoying, they represent security holes.

AWS must fork out $30.5M after losing P2P network patent scrap

Does anybody really feel bad for poor old Amazon?! Really, Amazon?! (This is probably the only infringer with the kind of deep pockets the owner could go after.)

Would it matter if the owner of the patent was the original inventor of the technology and the Jeff Bezos crew screwed the inventor over (deliberate infringement)? Would people still be feeling bad for poor old Amazon?

This is now an expired patent. The infringement happened years ago. Probably not applicable to the EU.

This is an OLD patent from the year 2000. This really wasn't very obvious to technicians back in that year.

Apple, Broadcom allowed to press Ctrl-Z on billion-dollar Wi-Fi patent payout to Caltech

Are they too poor to pay the rightful inventors?

This is pocket change for these companies. The people at Caltech created the technology. I use it all the time—and so does everybody else.

The devices these companies sell would be nearly worthless without the IP that made them possible. Why not let the companies that make HUGE money from these inventions pay this tiny fraction of their value to the people and institutions that made them.

If we want cool tech we have to pay the inventors who create this stuff. Starving these people and institutions stifles innovation.

APNIC: Big Tech's use of carrier-grade NAT is holding back internet innovation

What about security?

The principal issue we don’t use IPV6 is security. You really can’t turn it off.

Brit says sorry after waving around nonce patent and leaning on sites to cough up

It’s easy once you know a solution to claim how obvious it was in hindsight. Every football armchair captain does the same thing.

Patents are not awarded for what is obvious now (years after someone already solved a problem and showed everybody else how to solve it) they’re awarded for what was new and not obvious back then.

At the time it was patented wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t a widely published or implemented solution. At least the examiners of the patent didn’t think it was an obvious solution. Maybe they missed some prior art. Hard to say without a court.

For sure this is definitely something my browser is using right now. IMHO he deserves a bit of respect. He helped publish something everybody now uses. That’s worth something.

If it was a valid patent

He would have been better off sending this to the companies that build the major browsers that implemented the technology.

Whether or not his legal arguments have merit is a subject for the courts. The case belongs there not here.

Prof claims Lyft did a hit-and-run on his ride-sharing tech patent

Re: The stupidity of "business method" patents

Due respect. That's not how this works...

Doing the work of actually *inventing* something isn't like sitting on the sidelines of a football game and saying, "anybody could have made that goal". People have to invent something and then *prove* it was new to/against patent examiners who literally get paid to reject stuff. It's tough.

And regardless of how the examiners rule the application gets published for the rest of the world to review and pick-through for good ideas and new technologies. It's grueling.

Re: Also Known as ....

That has *nothing* to do with GPS, a technology that wasn't commercially available until about 2000. I know its hard to remember a time when we didn't have GPS everywhere (even in our pockets) but this tech was non-existent for commercial purposes until the year this patent was published. ** https://www.radio-electronics.com/info/satellite/gps/history-dates.php **

Patents rely on *specifics*, not generalities. Engineers do things with specifics. Mud and concrete are basically the same thing except for a few *very specific* key ingredients--but those key ingredients make all the difference in the world between a building that reaches 90 stories and one that melts in the rain.

Not Exactly...

Sorry to be technical but: patents and inventions aren't *ideas about doing things* but instead *reductions of practice*. People have long dreamed of flying, even told stories and made imaginary depictions of such inventions for centuries, but practical flying machines weren't available until the Wright Brothers--who developed and *reduced to practice* several inventions that made flying actually feasible. They patented the controls that actually made planes flyable. ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US821393A/ **

I just skimmed over the '703 patent (publicly available) and while it might not stand up under today's examination guidelines (they are VERY different than they were in the late '90s and early '00s) it does seem to reduce things to practice that weren't conceivable when drafted. It's no like this guy came out of the blue--he worked at Georgia Tech and his work became public as soon as it was published in the early 2000s and it has dozens of citations. He probably has a case. ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US6697730B2/en **

Patents expire after 20 years--and his will expire around 2020 so its unlikely to he will get much from Lyft going forward. IMHO they can at least pay him for paving the way for the existence of their company many years before school kids got together and thought they had a great business idea. He's a retired professor, how much does he need/want?