Singapore Firm Claims Patent Breach By Virtually All Websites 481
An anonymous reader writes "A Singapore firm, VueStar has threatened to sue websites that use pictures or graphics to link to another page, claiming it owns the patent for a technology used by millions around the world. The company is also planning to take on giants like Microsoft and Google. It is a battle that could, at least in theory, upend the Internet. The firm has been sending out invoices to Singapore companies since last week asking them to pay up."
...wha? (Score:4, Interesting)
If this patent was filed at the same time Mosaic came out - and I wasn't able to confirm when the patent WAS issued - then there might be a slight chance. Anything older and the patent would be expired in the US by now, anything newer and there would be prior art to invalidate it.
=Smidge=
I foresee a sudden resurgence of the ASCII artform (Score:2, Interesting)
"My site has no images only text?
If your site is only text and has no images, icons or other patent methods then no license required."
Sweeeet! Run the images through aalib [sourceforge.net]. Problem solved
Re:The firm was established in 2004 (Score:5, Interesting)
Singapore Piracy Central enforces Patents? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The firm was established in 2004 (Score:5, Interesting)
If you actually subscribe to their insane claims, or are extremely paranoid, you could get around it very easily by not having the image use a href. Their patent claim specifically mentions hrefs.
Re:what the fuck (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Singapore Piracy Central enforces Patents? (Score:4, Interesting)
How many ... exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Established in August 2004, Like.com also said it owns almost 12 patents in the areas of visual recognition and search.
Almost 12? What the hell kind of journalism is this? Is 11 too many to count? Does zdnetasia use base 12 (in which case, I could ALMOST see this being appropriate)?
This sort of "mis-turning of a phrase" is rapidly becoming one of my top pet peeves!
U.S. Patent 7,065,520 (Score:5, Interesting)
When you look at the claims, all the independent claims contain some key limitations:
receiving a search request from a user,
searching a database,
(other stuff, ending with)
"wherein the visual content comprises a plurality of mini-images in the form of a conveyor belt slide show."
A conveyor belt slide show? WTF? Gee, that seems fairly narrow to me!
Read the claims -- they define what the patent seeks to protect.
Re:Slightly Misleading (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The firm was established in 2004 (Score:3, Interesting)
Layne
Why this is happening (Score:5, Interesting)
The SG govt. is extremely business-friendly, to the point of screwing over its own citizens if there's a risk of scaring off investors. As such, they've become singularly enthusiastic about "Intellectual Property" in general - witness them pulling out four riot trucks [textfiend.net] to suppress a protest by seven people against an anime distributor.
Some smartass has realised this, and decided to play off the govt's policy against itself - the government would hesitate to suppress patent trolls, for fear of scaring off foreign investors. In the meanwhile it rips off thousands of dollars from scared Singaporean small businesses.
A pretty effective scam, I'd say.
In other news, Microsoft patents 1 and 0. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Patented A href? (Score:2, Interesting)
Off-topic, but I actually used one of these things (or something in the same family; it was 1984-85 and I don't remember the exact model) my first year in college. Freshman CS majors had to write Pascal programs using these on a CDC mainframe. There were 3 video terminals (I don't remember the type, now - they were large, clunky things, not made by DEC or Tektronix or any other company I recognized at the time) in one of the terminal rooms. They were greatly preferred, but since everyone wanted to use them, I was usually stuck at a print terminal. I got access to the manual for the terminals through a friend, and found that you could set a password. I'm sorry to say that I did that on all three terminals, and only gave it to two of my friends, so we could always use them. That's probably the most anti-social thing I've ever done...
Re:what the fuck (Score:3, Interesting)
In a capitalistic system, there is a way to provide for persons to have a limited monopoly on "inventions", which is what the patent process is designed for.
The scariest part is I think you are serious. So, no government interference is communism, and government controls into who can do what and preventing people from acting freely is capitalism. I guess that means that Libertarian and Communist are the same thing, since they both want to get the government the hell out of business? IP is an invention of the government to restrict people and restrict trade. I don't think that's capitalist at all. It does generate state monopolies backed by force of law, which all companies want to be on the good side of, but pro-corporate is nothing related to pro-capitalist. Corporations want free markets with a $10,000,000,000 entry fee. That way, once you have enough money, you can do whatever you want but there will be so few able to scrounge up that, there will be no real competition other than the existing oligopoly. But again, that's not capitalist, even if that's every large corporation's wet dream.
Re:Filed: October 3, 2001 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what the fuck (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Depends (Score:3, Interesting)
I can run through a huge amount of prior art on this one. And not just from the Web. If this does start to appear in the US we should put together a defense pack.
Re:what the fuck (Score:4, Interesting)
If ownership implies control (car owners control who can access their car), then a mechanism similar to copyrights or patents make sense for the ownership of intellectual property. And like our real property (land, cars, etc), the government (unfortuneately, in the opinion of many strong property rights advocates) has a say in exactly how extensive that mechanism can be. The government has curtailed what owning a car means in such a way that by virtue of being a car owner, I cannot drive as fast as I like (technically, this is licensure to use publicly owned roads, and not a restriction of car ownership per-se). Having similar caveats about how intellectual property may be used by the owner would not be new ground for any governoring body.
The summary is that governments define and enforce property rights for physical property. Intellectual property IS an important and valid concept, because what we usually think of as IP is where the majority of the real value in society is and what differentiates us from our mideival ancestors. Banishing intellectual property as a concept is no more feasible than banishing physical property as a concept.
(As an aside, some people think physical property should also be abolished. Any of them who are serious are necessarily willing to kill you to get you to hand over your property, so you should be wary of them. Consult history if you disagree.)
Re:"Prior Art" (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Looong process that the USPTO is unwilling to process in most cases. Their "business model" is as a certification factory.
2. Expensive process. Who's going to take up this cause? You and I?
The scale at which junk patents are being issued is mind boggling. Remember, this is the new and improved government that measures productivity! In this case it's the number of patents, per reviewer, per year.
This story reinforces the urgent need of abolishing software patents. That's something few are willing to pay enough attention to see this critical mission through. Instead, off the cuff "prior art" posts fly.
end-rant
I care (Score:1, Interesting)
"Us" must be you and your three Xbox buddies. I care about Slashdot enough to know that what this loser is doing is wrong and should be stopped. Failing that, I'd like to know if he's using three accounts to gang up on me because I don't hate MIKKRO$HAFT with enough zeal.
More to the point, if "everybody" knows about then, then that says a lot about the collective IQ around here. Do you need to pretend you're eight different people to have a normal discussion? Anyone who thinks that's OK should get themselves over to a shrink pronto.
Not to mention the fact that he must be modding himself up and other people down with all those accounts. I guess if you're one of his groupies you're safe, but I gather that's a really small subset of Slashdot.
-JC (posting anon because as usual, anyone who mentions twitter's sockpuppets gets the axe, probably from twitter himself)
Re:what the fuck (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the "improvements" of the Huawei ripoff version is the probable "feature" of a backdoor under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Choose your router carefully.
Re:what the fuck (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, trade secret death occurs every 5 years, as DRM takes its toll on technological advances. Defensive patents are the ultimate MAD device and trolls hide under every technological bridges.
I am going to argue that progress sped up as communication became global, and that very little of that acceleration is due to IP laws. I will further argue that mere knowledge isn't enough, that mastery comes with practice.
The only case where IP laws are necessary, is to balance restrictions imposed by the government. If law forces you to take 10 years to prove your meds are safe, they'd better give you a 10 year monopoly to compensate.
Re:Is that valid reasoning? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Singapore Piracy Central enforces Patents? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry if this post seems a bit vitriolic, but sometimes I do wonder whose interests are being protected here. We even have a local chapter of the BSA here, doing the same ass-hattery as they do over there.
The irony is in people not realizing that the cause of the cancer is in the mirror, dude.