Microsoft Holds Off on Eolas Patent Changes 239
Walkiry writes "As reported by Reuters, Microsoft believes the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office might come to the rescue and cancel the patent that was going to force them into changing the behaviour of Internet Explorer. Maybe the Patent Office is finally getting a clue? Or is it Microsoft's long arm? Time will tell..."
Too young to remember Stac? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Regardless of Whether You Hate Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
You what? Have you read this [microsoft.com]? Microsoft are using patents - and even the claim that they might have patents - to prevent Open Source software maintaining file compatibilty with MS Office.
Microsoft have never been shy about hinting to businesses thinking of adopting Linux that they may be left open to IP infringment lawsuits.
I'm sure the thing that's annoyed Microsoft most about this case is that they never thought about lodging the patent first.
Re:nice (Score:5, Informative)
As a process engineer, I can tell you that you will be sinking the chemical industry with that one.
In my plant, we process some natural polymers into various kinds of chemicals - mostly for the oil field. The basics of the chemistry are common knowledge (They appeared in peer-reviewed journals decades ago). The difference between my plant and the plants belonging to the competitors are our PROCESSES, which are patented.
I did an internship in a refinery, and that's an old, mature industry. The only way you are going to stay afloat and make money is by making small process improvements. After we pour money into R&D to find (for example) a better catalyst for a particular set of reactions, or perhaps better reaction conditions for a particular catalyst, we don't particularly want the guy down the road being able to just use the same process without having to pay us a bit to license it. It's only fair; we are the ones who figured it out.
Re:Regardless of Whether You Hate Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure. How about reading this [ffii.org]
Didn't read the CIFS license? (Score:3, Informative)
MS ever-so-graciously decided to publish their CIFS protocol and license it to anyone EXCEPT OSS projects. (Or as they called them "viral licenses".)
MS is not above using patents to club the competition into submission.
Re:Decisions (Score:3, Informative)
Two things here (Score:3, Informative)
First, the time at which they drink it is speculative - not to mention which they don't have a separate drive-thru coffee maker, so the people in the restaurant got the same coffee. Had she drunk it, her injuries would have been far worse. Second, McD's cups and lids are quite defective, making spills nearly guaranteed.
I generally don't agree with these bullshit injury judgements, but that one I do.
It's a well established fact in life that if you spill a hot liquid on yourself then you're going to get burned. A corollarly to this well established fact is that you shouldn't use your legs as a cup holder when hot liquids are concerned.
Actually, nothing meant for consumption by a human should cause THIRD DEGREE BURNS. Again, had she drunk the coffee, she could have suffered near-fatal injuries from INTERNAL third-degree burns.
I mean hell, by your reasoning if someone happened to carry home a jug of bleach on their head and they spilled it in their eyes then Clorox should be sued for all their worth.
You'll also notice that 1) Clorox isn't intended for internal consumption while coffee is and 2) the cap on a bottle of clorox is designed much better than that on a McD's coffee.
Bottom line is, nothing that hot should be given to a human in a car in a cup that's guaranteed to come apart.
Re:Patents the problem (Score:3, Informative)
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the laws here, specifically 35 USC 103(a), the obviouness requirement. 35 USC 103(a) states:The key point here is "if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious". The courts have ruled that for the patent office to to reject a claim as being obvious, they must provide evidence of similar prior art, and a second reference which the missing features of the prior art and some sort of teaching or motivation to include those missing features in the prior art system.
For example, if a claim stated that a hand held calculator is provided with a clock on the display screen, in order for that claim to be rejected (assuming this is before the time when calculators with clocks on their display screens existed) the examiner would have to produce a prior art reference with a hand held calculator and then find a reference which says something like "providing clocks on consumer electronics is a simple way to distinguish your products from the competitions". The base reference of a calculator plus the reference teaching the addition of clocks to consumer electronics would then be a rejection of the claim under 35 USC 103(a).
At one point the courst allowed the patent office to simply state that a feature or invention was obvious, but this practice has since been disallowed. To reject something as obvious there must be documented proof of the type that I described above, which is sometimes much harder to find than you may think, try it out sometime.
The patent laws themselves are fairly well written, but the courts interpretation of them has made it much harder for the patent office to deny patents now than it was in the past.