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The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

I've read the patent, and my first impression is that it's yet another one that should never have been granted. The patent uses the word 'method' a lot, but I don't see any method in terms of application. It's just a vague, albeit long, description of an idea. An obvious idea at that.

I also suspect, but have not yet checked, that mainframes were applying these ideas before 1992.

We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth—one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented.

Let's ask ourselves: Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million new lawsuits coursing through the system annually? Is it right that people with disputes come up against staggering expense and delay?

I don't know whether this has any merit, but I don't think anyone should be allowed to obtain a patent based on a general description of how something might operate without any specifics on how to actually do it and then sit on it for years and wait for someone to do something similar to what you described and sue them.

It reminds me of people who registered what would obviously be popular and sought after domain names when the internet started up and waited to sell them for huge profits.

Both groups are dirtbags who contribute nothing useful to the world. If you have a good idea, fine. Register it and do something with it or get out of the way and let those who actually create things do it.

Jan 19, 09 - 05:16 pm Comment from: jtc

so basically IPAT thought they would make up a patent so in the future they can try to sue major companies and get easy money.....

I hope they have deep pockets and their patent isn't full of crap or they will be in for a big surprise and loss of money from losing so badly.

Jan 19, 09 - 05:17 pm Comment from: jtc

@JohnLee

I couldn't agree with you more

Jan 19, 09 - 05:20 pm Comment from: Hm...

When will we ever find a judge with the courage to toss this excrement out of court with a contempt citing for a frivolous claim?!

Where is Microsoft? Where is IBM? Where is Sun

I think unix was around before 1992

I'm in the process of filing a patent for a non-tech related item. If someone infringes on my patent I'll take legal action. That said, my intention is to bring it to market quickly rather than sit on it and hope for a future lawsuit.

The patent system is too easily abused and really needs to be fixed.

Even if they came up with it, they waited 17 years to enforce it.

Isn't there a part of patent law that says: "Use it or lose it."

Or somesuch like that?

John

Jan 19, 09 - 05:44 pm Comment from: Randian

UNIX was created in 1969, I believe.

And according to Wikipedia:

In 1991, a group of BSD developers (Donn Seeley, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz, and Trent Hein) left the University of California to found Berkeley Software Design, Inc (BSDI). BSDI produced a fully functional commercial version of BSD Unix for the inexpensive and ubiquitous Intel platform, which started a wave of interest in the use of inexpensive hardware for production computing. Shortly after it was founded, Bill Jolitz left BSDI to pursue distribution of 386BSD, the free software ancestor of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD.

Surely 20+ years of actual implementation and improvement by the world's open-source coding team would have included the permissions-based foundation these assholes tried to patent. Right?

Jan 19, 09 - 05:46 pm Comment from: LordRobin

Do you know why we have so many lawyers?

Because we have so little regulation.

Yeah, countries in Europe deal with far few lawyers and lawsuits than we do in the United States. They also have much stricter government regulation. You can't have it both ways. We have this phobia against regulation in this country, yet we bitch about all the lawsuits. Well, if the government isn't going to step in and say to a business "no, you can't do this", then using lawsuits to rectify the matter is the only option.

In short -- you want fewer lawsuits? PASS MORE REGULATION.

------RM

Jan 19, 09 - 05:48 pm Comment from: Asmodeus

Too much prior art in this case. Another couple of loser patent trolls that are going out of business. Too bad.

What am I missing...

1. It wasn't filed in Texas
2. I don't see Mircrosoft listed
3. Why are hardware guys mentioned. Is this not a software issue.

We have the most lawyers because we have the most people in prison. Or maybe it's the other way around. Regardless, no one even comes close to the US when it comes to locking up people behind bars. WE'RE NUMBER 1!!!!

Jan 19, 09 - 06:07 pm Comment from: mossman

LordRobin

I agree with the sentiment, except for one thing: regulation in this case wouldn't even be necessary, except that some idiots decided software could be patented in the first place and passed laws (or whatever legal constructs) necessary to regulate them (e.g. examine, grant, contest, revoke)!

Vicious cycle: add regulations and laws, then deal with unpleasant side-effects with even more regulations and laws. It's amazing that there isn't a sunset clause on all legislation passed, so you can review it after 10 or 20 years to see if it's working as the public expects it to.

One Guy from Finland, Paul,

Microsoft was named in a complaint earlier this month against software makers: Microsoft, Symantec, F-Secure, Novell, AVG Technologies, and PC Tools.

Notably absent from either complaint are Sun, IBM, Sony, Oracle, SCO and others. The complainants are obviously cherry-picking targets, presumably to be able to go after others later. Why is Apple named in the hardware group and not the software group? Why is there a hardware group at all?

Yeah, right. Let's have more of sort of thing (excessive numbers of laws and regulations) responsible for all sorts of even worse problems.

The logic sounds a bit like the old "hair of the dog that bit you" cure for hangovers.

The big hole in this reasoning is that lack of regulation isn't the the root cause of civil lawsuits... or most lawsuits for that matter.

Besides... Europeans have more regulation because of what might be called "inherited peasant attitude."

They are use to over reaching governmental bureaucracies because of century after century of overwhelming, generally iron-fisted rule by self-appointed royalty and their bootlickers... most of whom were replaced during the last century by control freaks of the righteously self-appointed socialist variety and their dupes.

After generation after generation of living under such conditions, the European populations have become enured to living that way. It's like the Stockholm Syndrome on a massive historical and societal level.

Over the course of the past four centuries or so, those Europeans who couldn't take living under authoritarianism left, usually to come here... only to have their progeny throw their ancestors' efforts down the toilet because they naively/ignorantly believe the state can alleviate or save them from many of life's vicissitudes. A great number of which the state is cause of.

Jan 19, 09 - 06:49 pm Comment from: alansky

@kgh and @Randian:

Right. Isn't OS X's permission scheme based on unix, which is like really old??? This is ridiculous!

Europe is highly regulated not only by individual sovereign governments but increasingly by the EU.

This EU regulation extends all the way down to how much curve there is in a banana for it to be legally sold as a banana.

If lawyers incomes were capped at $200, 000 PA we would have fewer around.

I just got finished "reading" this patent. If there was ever a need to cure insomnia, this is it. My favorite line is this "While the invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the disclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims." So they want to have patent protection for what they claim but also for what they haven't claimed. I believe that thee are at least 70 claims listed. After a while they all sound/read the same. I am not sure if prior art come into the festival of generalizations or not. I worked on IBM main frames back in the mid 70s, at IBM.

This is why software was not patentable for so many years, but could be copyrighted. Copyrights last a lot longer. It took them 14 years to do something about "violations" of their patents?

Yeah, looks like a rubbish patent to me too. Mark Ritchie - one of the early developers of UNIX - at least had something real and substantive to demonstrate to earn his SetUID patent.

I actually started my IT career doing UNIX support in 1983, just as minicomputers were becoming popular. Windows didn't come out for a few more years. Normally, one might expect something "newer" to be better or more advanced, since it could build on what came before. Not in this case. I used to joke that the reason UNIX was so much better is that it was conceived by Ph.D. computer scientists, whereas DOS and Windows were conceived by college dropouts.

So let me get this right: This lawsuit is about a company that wants to be able to grant permission so that companies like Apple can ask for permission to have permissions?

My head is starting to hurt.

My solution to all this is to bring our soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and send in all our lawyers in their place. I figure the conflicts over there will be wrapped up in a few weeks. Instead of dropping bombs or dodging improvised roadside weapons, we would respond with legal injunctions and lawsuits. It would have those towelheads begging for mercy.

Trust me: this would work. And think of the residuals their law firms would rack up...

I think I'll get a patent on reading/writing from left to right or right to left or top to bottom. Then sue all the publishers.

Why isn't the legal system putting away O.J. years ago (for one obvious example) instead of wasting time with stuff like this? Oh that's right, I forgot to give them credit for locking up Martha Stewart. I did feel a lot safer walking around after dark...

Yeah, if this is basically taking a stab at the traditional user permissions we all know and love, then this company should get hammered by even smarter tech lawyers since Unix crafted the idea WAY back in the early 70s. Other operating systems like VMS, etc... followed suit.

Jan 19, 09 - 09:49 pm Comment from: theloniousMac

This is where a professional jury is needed. A jury of just a bunch of average folks and your average judge won't know what the hell is going on. I've been in this business for more years than I care to count and I'm scratching my head over this law suit.

As someone mentioned, it sounds like a bunch of hardware manufacturers being sued about a software issue?

Without a professional involved in the decision making process, i.e. someone smart enough to ask the questions that have been asked even here in the comments on this article, the defendant can be screwed by jargon.

I ran this past my sister in law, a big time lawyer in DC, and she said it is "without merit."

Good enough for me.

...money grab

I agree with Jimmy.

Has someone allready patented the way one goes to toilets?
...Please! These patent sues are often getting really ridiculus!...

Jan 20, 09 - 04:07 am Comment from: Yours Smugly

West Germany?? Welcome to the 21st century, Jimmy! Have you visited Czechoslovakia lately?

I think what they aim here is the concept of "Sandbox", referred in the patent as "safety box", rather than simple authorizations. Anyone as an idea of when the concept of sandboxes of computer programs was first used ? Not sure it existed on mainframes...

The concept of a sandbox certainly existed on mainframes. I was using them as an every day part of my work at CSIRO in the late 70's.

Many years ago before a patent could be granted the inventor had to show a working prototype to prove that it was not a spurious application. Also software was not able to be patented because it was deemed to be a mathematical formulae and therefore capable of being derived.

The concept of derivation as a bar to patent granting still exists and should be applied to junk patents like this. Lets start getting them struck off as invalid patents.

In addition, there is an obligation on any patent holder to take timely steps to defend the patent of lose the exclusivity to that intellectual property. 17 years is not a timely response. Throw them out with their lawyers.

Jan 20, 09 - 09:28 am Comment from: El Guapo

Lawyers and "over-litigation" will be at the root of the downfall of this great nation.