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BountyQuest Announces First Winners for Prior Art 130

tessd writes "BountyQuest has been bragging for a few days that it was going to announce some winners -- looks like it wasn't kidding. Four winners -- $10k each -- with prior art that could bust patents held by Cisco, Walker Digital, InTouch and Oracle. Them's some big names. Check out the guy from Oregon who won $10k because he held onto an out-of-print copy of Snow Country magazine"
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BountyQuest Announces First Winners for Prior Art

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  • I am only asking the questions. Do patents really protect the small guy. The big monopolies have huge legal budgets. How could a small guy enforce his patent. Just because you have one does not mean your idea is protected. Lots of people have thought of great ideas, only to have them solen because someone patentened part/whole of the idea.

    -Angreal

    You do have a valid point. I am just wondering if their are differing opinions on the subject.
  • the ownership of rdb is not completely irrelevant. as the original publisher, rdb has the right to later apply for a patent on the material they published. and oracle, as the owner of the company, would presumably have a right to do so "on their behalf".

    if i publish something new today, and five other people publish the same thing two weeks from now, i can still apply for the patent six months from now, even though other people have already published 'prior art'.

    in this case however, i would expect this to be a non-issue. the time window to do such a thing is reasnbly short (i believe a year or so) and the prior art in question was published in 1991. oracle, whether they owned rdb or not, did not file for the patent until 1998
  • Anyway I just had an interesting idea for a way to discourage bad patents. What about imposing a fine on companies who patent things that are subsequently invalidated due to prior art (or any other reason)? The amount of the fine should be equal to the amount of royalties collected on the patent and should be paid to the person (or group) who provided the proof needed to invalidate the patent?

    I think this is a bad idea, at least as it's clothed now. I think that a lot more thought is going to have to go into it. Certainly, the fine should not be equal to the royalties. The fine should be equal to the legal costs spent invalidating the patent, plus a percentage of the royalties. You can't ask for it all back, really. If you really deserved it, you'd have developed it yourself.

  • Those guys aren't offering bounties on the Internet. But BailJumpers.Net [bailjumpers.net] is.
  • Are you trying to suggest that the USPTO examiners are going to know more about technology than the Slashdot readership?

    I very much suggest that in some fields, the USPTO examiners certainly do know more about technology than the slashdot readership.

    If you'd like a suggested experiment, find someone who actually knows something about the technology behind biotech. (A bona fide molecular biologist would be a good choice.) Ask them to read /. comments on a biotech story, and tell you what they think. Even many of the comments upmoderated as "Informative" are full of misinformation.

    Too often, moderators see a post that looks like it's full of facts and upmoderate it as informative, without doing the least bit of checking to see whether the facts are accurate or not. Since computers are not my field of expertise, I cannot gauge how often this occurs in computer tech articles, but I know enough not to accept anything printed in a /. comment as gospel truth without any outside confirmation, even if it's moderated up to (5, Informative).

    Im pretty confident in my understanding of Computer Tech - maybe a USPTO examiner will have equal understanding, but you cannot suggest the total knowledge of that USPTO couldnt be 'aided' by the input of the "Slashdot" Readership...

    I don't deny there are many intelligent, knowledgeable people here on /. If there weren't, I wouldn't be reading. But it seems to me the problem is separating the wheat from the chaff--it's a waste of the patent examiner's time to look through hundreds of things that are claimed to be prior art to find the two that actually are.

    I don't have a good answer to this issue. If I did, I would propose it as a replacement to the current moderation system. I do know that the current moderation system does not adequately resolve this issue.

  • A big part of the problem is that the PTO is using a completely non-obvious definition of 'obvious.' They seem to want an objective method of finding an answer to an inherently subjective question (Is this idea obvious?). The problem for them is that what is obvious to one person may not be obvious to another. This is why the Constitution requires the invention to not be 'obvious to a person of normal skill in the art' (or words to that effect). That is, Alta Vista's 'invention' should not be considered obvious by the average network programmer.

    Of course, the PTO doesn't define 'obvious' the way you and I do, so they have thrown out any tests that a normal person would use to determine obviousness. Instead, they reason that if an idea or invention is truly obvious, it would have been mentioned in public already. To them, this means that the idea would have been published in a relevant professional journal or mentioned in a previous patent application. The problem with this logic is that professional journals don't generally accept obvious ideas for publication and most people who come up with obvious ideas don't file for patents on them. Here's an example: it seems obvious to me that I have to turn my PC on before I can use the compiler, but I challenge anyone to find a paper in a professional journal that discusses this as a method for improving programmer efficiency. The PTO, on the other hand, would reason that since this fact has never been published before, it must have been original and difficult to conceive.

  • Exactly. Prior art is what this site is about, and that's great.

    But the biggest problem with patents today is the "obvious" factor. Apparently, patent examiners think everything is non-obvious. And there's no really good way to prove something was obvious years after the fact.

    For example, web searching - sure, it's obvious. But how could you, in 2001, prove to a judge that the concept of a search engine was obvious whenever that patent was granted? Well, it was obvious as soon as the web existed, because archie was doing the a similar thing for FTP sites, and veronica was doing exactly the same thing for gopher sites.

    Prior art is just the easiest way to get patents invalidated, even if they should never have been granted in the first place.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @04:40PM (#469150) Journal
    USPTO should run a website - maybe even slashcode that requests prior art from the public.

    The USPTO see's issuing a Patent as revenue. More patents == more Revenue. If you read the USPTO 'newsletter' you will see that they consider their 'growth' a sign of success... completely opposite as most of us think. If they would simply make the prior-art search in a more public manner they would be awarding MUCH fewer patents. But if you read their website/newsletter they believe that the USPTO is a business - and its products are patents.. they feel they are doing an increasingly good job.

    If they ran all potential patents through a Slash powered site you'd see 1% of the patents you see today.
  • The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true

    I disagree - that's not what the government does. The government is more analagous to a armed landlord saying "you pay the rent or you move out. If you don't pay the rent and don't move out, I'll shoot you." which, I don't think can be said to be taking your money at gunpoint, because you have the choice to not pay and not get shot by choosing to leave.

    The government does not force you to stay in a society and incur the rent (taxes) that said society requires of you for the priviledges you gain from being a part of the society. (Unless you've committed a crime or something. (Which can of course, include previous attempts to use the priviledges without paying for them)).

    You benefit immensely from being a part of a society, and if that society decides that some of the costs of those benefits should be met by taxation, (and furthermore, as a part of that society you have the right to try to change that decision) I can't see how claims of duress can be made. It kind of sounds like people want to have their cake and eat it too. Which is quite natural I guess, but hardly a challenge to justice.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:54PM (#469152)
    I am posting as an AC because I work for a company that gets a lot of patents... anyway I am definitely in agreement that the pantent system is broken, and news like this is great (I just wish more software and buisness method patents were in the list).

    Anyway I just had an interesting idea for a way to discourage bad patents. What about imposing a fine on companies who patent things that are subsequently invalidated due to prior art (or any other reason)? The amount of the fine should be equal to the amount of royalties collected on the patent and should be paid to the person (or group) who provided the proof needed to invalidate the patent? I think something like this would go a long way to discouraging the market for stupid and unethical patent measures...

  • "What we find here is that people are deliberately trying to upset the applecart and punish these companies, and those who work for them, for doing what is natural, and trying to secure their futures."

    The companies are sercuring their futures by destroying the futures of their competitors and open-source programming. Patents are inherently hostile.

    "Why are they attacking the companies, when the companies have done nothing wrong?"

    The companies in question have done plenty wrong. Nobody blames them for trying to secure their futures. These companies are laying minefields in legally uncharted waters. That is what they are being blamed for. This is not punishment. This is minesweeping.

    "It is the patent system they should be attacking, and the government, through protest and through the ballot box."

    Here I agree with you completely.

    However, I don't see why anti-patent actions should be limited to the measures you suggest. The only legal way to fight the patent system within the patent system, is with prior art. If there was prior art, the company was wrong to apply for the patent, and the patent office was wrong to grant it.

    I appreciate what you're saying, and I agree that the people working for the hostile companies should not be punished in any way. However, I don't see how this prior art competition is punishing those people. The offending patents are the target, not the people.
  • by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:55PM (#469154)
    Snap-On Tools is a good example of what you are talking about. The inventor had his idea stolen from Snap-On, and spent his entire adult life trying to collect from them. By he finally won his suit (for millions), he was an old man... an old man who could have been spending his life living like a king on the profits from his ideas, instead of proving to the courts that he was ripped off.

    Does any of the patent "reform" that people are proposing really help inventors like him?

  • Just a couple questions. Why is implementing or expanding on someone else's idea/invention called stealing? Why do some people think it is somehow wrong?
  • Patents are a necessary way to protect those who invest a lot of time innovating otherwise, where is the motive if you know someone is going to steal your work.

    Scientific innovation has been going on for a long time, with and without the use or even existance of patents on "intellectual property"...

    Imagine cavemen patenting fire, or the "club-on-head" method of choosing a wife...

    What if the Wright brothers had patented their flying machine?

    Hell, the guys from the University of Pennsylvania who made the ENIAC tried to patent their idea of a "digital computer", and extract royalties from Honeywell, IBM, RAND, etc. back in the 1950's. The lawsuit was struck down in court, of course, partly because their patent was "too broad."
    What if there was only one computer manufacturer today?
    Do you really think you or I or the IT industry would be better off???

  • It's been a trend over the last 18 months for companies to use patent warfare to increase market share by freezing out competition with threats of litigation.

    With VC money now thin on the ground, and investors looking for real business plan's will the Prior Art movement now stop this stupidity by forcing VC's to question the tactics of companies that seek to ringfence revenue streams through the courts?

  • I don't know why nobody else has mentioned this yet...

    The best thing about this proposed system is that it automatically forms a volunteer (unless they're successful) group of patent-breakers.

    It'll be nice to have a group of people dedicated to earning money by disproving some plaugerist's claim to fame.
  • The real issue was not that One Click Buying was obvious to anyone who understood cookies (Think of the "One Click" way you can order your slashboxes on the /. homepage, etc.), it was that it was *too* obvious, and most people went and invented more complex schemes that had better security and lower return rates. But, with the Patent Office, "too obvious" is just as good as "non-obvious" -- I know someone who has patented a device that should have been thought of 100 years ago - it's just a light bulb and pieces of glass and plastic. But that's fair game, and software isn't an exception.
    --
  • As long as we're dreaming, it's been suggested over and over again that there ought to be a period of public review and comments for the abtract of the pending patents. You can be sure that several large companys would scan for pending patents from competitors and submit prior art, and in all likelyhood there'd be some individuals with Free (or open source) software interests in mind, who'd submit stories to slashdot for anything really nasty, offering hundreds of thousands of readers the opportunity to be alerted.

    Well, it's a nice dream...

  • Lets see:

    a. Company X pays BountyQuest money to put this up
    b. BountyQuest advertises $10,000 for finding prior art
    c. you get 10,000, bountyquest gets whats left(prob more than 10,000), and company X gets a chance at invalidating some patent.

    So, whats wrong with some company noticing that lots of companys want certain patents somehow done away with, some people want the entire patent system reformed, and just connecting the two for a piece of the pie? Seems like a decent hting to me . . .
  • isn't up to the patenter (is that a word) to actively look for prior art? It should punish those people who don't exert any effort at finding prior art and then claim ignorance.
  • by Angreallabeau ( 263172 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:35PM (#469163) Homepage
    Stuff like that scares big corporations. They invest a lot of money securing and enforcing their patents. I sometimes wonder if the world be better of if we followed some more opensource principles. Where as all information is available for the good of society. I think most of slashdot readers would agree that the opensource movement is a step in that direction. People still make money on the ideas, but their enhancements and the evolution of an concept(idea) is not left to stagnat because of a stupid patent.

    I wonder what of world would be like if their was not such thing as patents? Your thoughts.

    -Angreal
  • I thought I heard somewhere that patents in the high tech world lasted a lot shorter than patents anywhere else, like 18 months kind of short. I may be wrong though.

    we need a ban on software patents

    You don't patent software, you copyright it. You patent algorithms, but since copyrights last so much longer, and the software is essentially the same as the algorithm, most companies just copyright it. This is what we need to stop. We need to get rid of the consideration of source code as works of literature.

  • by wunderhorn1 ( 114559 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:36PM (#469165)
    I can see many more suprious patent lawsuits coming...

    Companies feeling their profit margins slipping see collecting royalties on their patents as a way to make up for lost revenue, particularly with the US economy slowing down.

    Besides all the patent lawsuits coming up out of nowhere, companies will increasingly see patenting everything they can think of as valid strategy for staying afloat.

    It's up to us to stop them from trampling our rights. We are not microserfs; We should be able to use technology without having to pay tribute to the corporate lords.

  • by coolgeek ( 140561 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:59PM (#469166) Homepage
    I am absolutely speechless. Perhaps certain affiliations of individuals really can overcome corporate hegemony. Sure puts a dent in my cynicism. Thanks Mr. O'Reilly for a great idea, and a truly heartwarming experience. As for that Bezos guy, well, we're not finished with you yet... =) Prior art on 1-click has to be lurking around here somewhere. BTW here's my implementation of a technology that innovates way past 1-click, I call it 0-click shopping: <img href=&quotbuyme.jpg" onMouseOver="document.basket.submit(); ">
  • The award for the database copy should be thrown out. Oracle bought Rdb (I cant remember if it was from digital or Compaq) a few years ago and with it got all of their technology
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @01:01PM (#469168)
    only big corporations can afford it now! It usually takes at least one exchange where the patent office sends the patent back, usually with trivial complaints (ignoring the major problems completely). To get this done in a reasonable amount of time, you need a decent lawyer, and when all is said and done, you've paid a minimum of $15,000 for the whole process. Now if someone infringes on your patent, you're looking at a $100,000+ lawsuit to enforce it.

    patents haven't protected small inventors for many years; long before software patents were legalized by judicial fiat.
  • I would be more than happy to vote for patent reform, as I would be happy to vote for campaign finanace reform. The reason neither of these two measures will show up on any ballot in my lifetime is the same: the government of the United States is owned by corporate interests.

    The actions of BountyQuest and Alan Emtage [slashdot.org] will, perhaps, interrupt the revenue flow from these spurious patents enough to get the government to realize just what kind of prostitutes they all are, and start working for the people again.

  • Doesn't the first key investor [bountyquest.com] have a problem with putting a bounty on this kind of thing? [bountyquest.com]

    Probably not. A lot of people acknowledge that Amazon was the first to implement one click shopping, but that doesn't mean it isn't an obvious idea. Some day when man colonizes Mars, people will set up shops on Mars, and there will be a shop which becomes the first to sell peanut butter. Although this shop was the first to sell peanut butter on Mars, this should not be patentable because it is obvious, it's only that it was not feasable until recent technology. The same holds true of the Amazon one click patent, it was not until cookies came around that they could implement it, but that does not mean it was non obvious, it doesn't even mean other people didn't think of before time they did, it just means they were the first to finish it. It's not the possibility of prior art which makes the One click patent a bad one, it's the obviousness of it.
  • by Masem ( 1171 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @01:08PM (#469171)
    ...and the patents that infringe on them are still 'valid'. This only means that the parties that posted the reward money in each of these cases now has a strong way to challenge the patents, but even then, it doesn't render the patents null and void yet. For example, the music distribution case specifically states that the finding of the musicans distribution methods prior to the patent filing might knock several of the claims out, but not all of the claims -- this particular patent may still be around but not as inclusive as it started as.

    Needless to say, this is rather common in filing patents: grab more than you want, including possible cases that might infringe, as then you'll probably end up with at least as much as you wanted if not a bit more, as opposed to getting too little.

    Now, of course, something like the Orcale database snapshot sounds like it's completely dead in the water, since the prior art completely nullifies the case.

  • EverQuest what now?
  • threatening other people with cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money, when they have no legal right to do so, does not qualify as 'honest'

    They have the patent, so they do have the legal right (IANAL), at least for the time being. What they don't have is the moral right.

    What they're doing doesn't exactly qualify as 'dishonest', either, since they are not (necessarily) aware that their patents might be invalid.

    I'm not saying they did nothing wrong, but it's more akin to innocent misrepresentation than it is to fraud.

  • Whether intentionally or not, I will own your mind because its my Manifest Destiny to do so under the corporate system. In other words, even if i come up with an idea you had last year, I can lay claims to it, because in my opinion you are not entitled to your own thoughts as long as I have more money than you, and I don't give a fuck if you think your mind should be free or not. Giving you your rights wouldn't make my wallet any fatter. As long as its legal for me to strip you of your thoughts, thinking for myself would only be half-assed and should not be supported.
  • IMO, if you read the comments following his, its pretty obvious that he's wrong. Prior art does render it invalid if it shows that what the patent holds is Obvious.

    If prior art is A+B+C and the Patent is A+B+C+D, then the patent is invalid in my opinion (to a certain degree I must admit.) Depending on the situation +D can mean absolutely nothing, could be a slight variation not worth patenting or can make the whole difference in the world (the missing link to the Ultimate answer about the meaning of life, the universe and Everything).

    So I think looking at prior art IS very important, and yes, prior art might not always mean an invalid patent, but it could!

    p.s. The answer is 42!
  • Speaking of deadwood, it shouldn't be too expensive to ship the I-don't-know-how-to-vote morons from Florida to California and burn them as fuel.
  • by vergil ( 153818 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <bligrev>> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @01:11PM (#469177) Journal
    I highly recommend Brian Kahin's excellent essay: " The Expansion of the Patent System: Politics and Political Economy [firstmonday.org]" for anyone interested in learning how the U.S. Patent system creates incentives for/ rewards crappy business method/ software patents.

    For example, Kahin sagely points out:

    "In-house legal counsel advise against routine reading of issued patents because of the risk of treble damages for willful infringement."

    In my opinion, such idiosyncracies in the U.S. Patent system only reinforce the probability of the U.S. government handing out specious monopolies.

    I spoke to a former patent examiner a few weeks ago. He informed me that (based on his observations working for the USPTO) patent examiners typically spend about 7-8 hours examining individual patents, plus another 7-8 hours doing "other things." Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality.

    Sincerely,
    Vergil
    Vergil Bushnell

  • Really strange thinking ! have thought about companies which are being sued ! it's the other face of the coin !
  • Funny... The whole cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money thing reminded me of government. What cracks me up is the mindset that a corporation doing this is bad, but the government taking your money (at gunpoint mind you), and giving it to people who don't make an honest living (e.g. Welfare) is good. Both are bad! I should point out that the problem isn't patents and corporations getting patents. Its the superflous patents that shouldn't have been granted in the first place, and the "looters" who think they can get away with trying to enforce those patents. Oh well, who is John Galt?
  • Excuse me? Did i read that correctly? Are you saying that it is wrong for us to "punish" these companies / people by taking away their "livelyhood"?

    Please realize that with the proof of prior art, these same companies that you are defending have done exactly that to someone else. By filing a patent and getting the Good Old USPO to accept, these companies are building their "livelyhood" on somebody else's hard work and ideas and have effectively taken away their livelyhood.

    Why should we not take away something that was never rightfully theirs? While I may not have the most positive views about patents, I do believe that they have uses. Using patents to steal somebody elses work is most definately not one of them. If prior art to a patent exists and is signifigant (it should be pretty much the same as the patent), then in my view that patent is a tool of theft and should be treated as such.

    maybe I'm ranting, but that's my thoughts...

  • It's true, MIDI is very flexible and can be used to impliment many desired facilities. But as soon as it does that (i.e General MIDI) then it becomes something else, an extension. MIDI is a standard. Sending samples between samplers is nice (MIDI Sample Dump Standard), but plug your sampler into my DX7 and see if it can transfer samples. Actually thats a bad example, coz the DX7 screws around with MIDI, as Yamaha are prone to doing. This is especially true regarding this article which deals with the original MIDI standard. Hence, not dealing with audio. Directly ;-)
  • Why is implementing or expanding
    on someone else's idea/invention
    called stealing?

    Same reason it is if someone moves into your home.
    Or drives off in your car.
    Or sleeps with your spouse,
    opps that's called something else, isn't it?

    Taking something that doesn't belong to you is the definition of theft.
  • I'd just like to point out to those people intent on bringing up the Amazon One-Click patent, that One-Click was one of the bounties - posted 10.18.2000, expired 1.18.2001


    --
  • f prior art is A+B+C and the Patent is A+B+C+D, then the patent is invalid in my opinion (to a certain degree I must admit.

    Were this true, most patents would be invalid. They are not. There are zillions of cases where patents meeting the criteria for "your opinion" have been held to be valid. In short, you don't seem to understand Section 103's requirements concerning unobviousness.
  • If that's how you feel about it, how do you suggest we come up with the next HIV/Cancer/Cholesterol fighting wonder drug? Or do you have several million dollars to plunge into research, and several million more to plunge into FDA approval? And then when you're done, will you be perfectly willing to sit back and let every pharmeceutical company in the country turn out the same pills without fronting the R&D costs?

    If so, you're a better (and richer) person than I am.

    Patents are not an inherently bad idea. They exist to make it worth your while to do the research and create. The fact that patents are used for different reasons now is a good cause to revamp the system (as BountyQuest is doing), but not good enough cause to eliminate the system altogether.

    IMHO, BountyQuest improves the patent system (by helping keep people honest), keeping it truer to its basically good function. If you throw out the patent system entirely, then you make R&D in many fields much less profitable, and thus much less R&D is likely to be done.

  • Werdna argues that for prior art to be useful in a legal challenge it needs to be compared point-by-point against the claims.

    This is true. Clearly bountyquest thinks so. All the prizewinners' prior art satisfied PRECISELY that criteria.

    See http://www.bountyquest.com/arttutorial/arttutorial .htm


    Required Elements: This is the most important part. To win the bounty your answer must match ALL of these elements. Meeting just a few will not do it.
  • by werdna ( 39029 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @03:32AM (#469187) Journal
    Bountyquest only pays for prior art upon which the patent claims read completely. Earlier art which is read on by only some of the elements is ineligible.

    Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy.

    That's a shame. By ignoring seminal information and keeping yourself willfully ignorant of what you claim to be technicalities, you remain unable to discern what is relevant to the questions of policy and what is not. If the "technicalities" provide against that which you are criticizing, you will appear foolish when you try to make a change, and if the "technicalities" provide for loopholes, you will miss an opportunity to make real and useful change.

    The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.

    Of course it isn't useful for purposes of demagoguery to confuse the issues with the facts -- its much easier just to wave your hands and whine. If I am being accused of calling irrelevant arguments irrelevant, I am guilty as charged. But there are good, strong arguments to be made, and the technical community (of which I am also a member) is best positioned to make them.

    It would be a shame if those arguments were ignored because a few of us found it more politically expedient for us to remain in bliss.
  • How much research should an inventor do? Enough research. And if he/she doesn't find prior art, and somebody else does, well, tough luck. You don't get to have a patent on something somebody else has already invented. Sorry. (Yes, I know that's not the ways the corps do it, but that's the way it's supposed to work, dammit!)

    Right now, inventors can only make money (like being able to live comfortably money) by selling their inventions to companies who will produce them. What's NOT right is corporations who hold patents on stupidly basic concepts and use them to beat one another about the head.
  • Although what you say sounds reasonable, there's something that doesn't work out: if there is prior art, then the alleged invention has already been invented! If you spend ten years in your isolated world inventing something revolutionary only to find out when you're done that it's been done before, then I'd be tempted to say that you didn't do your proper research (and here of course I'm not referring to research before filing a patent, but just plain research about what you're doing)!

    Maan
  • Well, at least it doesn't scare BountyQuest. They issued a bounty on their own business model [bountyquest.com].
  • This is just one form of protest.

    Also, by over-turning bad patents you will allow more people to use the technology and thus more innovation.
  • by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @01:19PM (#469192) Homepage Journal
    What they are doing is debunking the patents that didn't deserve to exist in the first place. The ones that wouldn't have been issued if the patent office had been doing the job it's paid to do, rather than grant everything and let the courts figure it out.

    The only patents that get busted are the ones that wouldn't have held up in court, at significantly less expense than taking them to court. The only livelihoods being damaged are those of lawyers. And that can't be causing all that much damage to society.

    Of course, the Real Problem is that the Patent Office isn't doing its job, but that lot has pretty much come forward and said they see no reason that they should have to do their jobs, since they can just rubber stamp the patents and let the courts figure it out. Personally, I'd like to see the Patent Office fined for the cost of each bounty collected by this site, plus a fee for operating costs. Perhaps that would encourage them to reform their activities. One can dream.

  • I don't get it. A company is giving away money to people who find prior art for patents. How do they make money???
    ___
  • I think this is theoretically taken care of. If someone sues you for patent infringement, and you can demonstrate obvious prior art in a timely manner after being informed of the alleged infringement, then the plaintiffs would be bringing about a frivolous suit. Their case gets dismissed, and your case about their harassing suit can begin.
  • I think the government only takes your taxes at gunpoint if you're in some fundamentalist cult. Most of our taxes go to social security, then defense. You seem to be calling this "welfare."

    Okay, I just realized there's no point arguing with someone who makes blanketing (and false) generalizations. Oh well.

  • Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality. I'm a patent attorney, and I can confirm that this is not the case. Patent examiners are rewarded for moving cases off their desks, but not for allowing them. In an examiner's haste to get a case back to me, he/she's more likely than not going to reject all the claims out of hand, and leave it to me to explain why they should be allowed, usually without trying to understand the invention first and therefore citing mostly irrelevant prior art.
  • This is great that a few people are made $10k for finding prior art. But, in my opinion, it still doesn't address the fundamental problem of the patent office trying to determine what is "obvious".

    The AltaVista patent is a good example. Given a problem (i.e. how to search the web) AltaVista claims to have patented a solution. But, as has been mentioned before, it is also the "obvious" solution to any Software Engineer faced with the problem. Hopefully, this patent will be tossed out due to the prior art from the guys who wrote the "gopher" and "archie" search engines, but it should have ever been allowed to be a patent at all.

    Remember, its more than just "original" that defines what can be granted a patent. The U.S. Patent Office seems to have forgotten this...

  • Patents are a necessary way to protect those who invest a lot of time innovating [Microsoft buzzword] otherwise, where is the motive if you know someone is going to steal your work.

    Certainly. But seventeen years? No way! Our society moves much faster than when patents were first implemented. At that time there was no such thing as software. Patent abuse has become rampant -- we need a ban on software patents.
  • Whether intentionally or not, this scheme only serves to further legitimize the patent system. In other words, the more people find prior art, the more they are indirectly supporting the system of patents, which in my opinion is fundamentally flawed not because there aren't enough patent officers to search for prior art, but because all ideas should be free and they are not. BountyQuest doesnt do anything to address the latter. They're measures to fight patents is half-assed and should not be supported.

    Griffis

  • That is the entire point of the Festo case cited in my posting earlier this week. Now, if you ask for too much, and amend a claim *AT ALL* to narrow it for reasons related to patentability, you lose ALL RIGHTS to equivalents for that element.

    Festo is huge in this regard, and the former strategy of starting by claiming the world and negotiating downwards is now a quick ticket to a malpractice claim.
  • The prior art appears to satisfy the requirements of the bounty, and appears to be covered element-for-element by the broad claims of the patent.
  • But there lies the rub: If you convince the law that source code is not literature, then all the protection it enjoys under articles for the freedom of speech (i.e. because source code is seen as literature) start to tumble down around it.
  • Unfortunately, it's not the same. As the saying goes, "If I have an apple and you have an apple and we trade, we both still have just one apple. BUT, if you have an idea and I have and idea and we trade, we both have 2 idea's."

    Or more pertinent to your example, if I have an apple and you take it from me, I've lost an apple. If I have an idea and I share it with you, we both have an idea and we're arguably both better off.

    -----
    "People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
  • Nah. I understand what he said.

    I was fishing for more specific information.

    v
    Vergil Bushnell

  • Oh yes, patent examiners have nothing better to do than to sit around reading "Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits are prior art!" Not to mention posts from well-meaning people who submit things they legitimately think are prior art, but are not because they don't have the first clue about the legal requirements for what is and is not prior art--and are subsequently upmoderated by equally well-meaning, equally clueless people.
  • by Sodium Attack ( 194559 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @05:23AM (#469206)
    My question is this: Who are their clients

    Almost certainly competitors of the companies owning the patents they're trying to invalidate.

    and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?

    Probably too much.

    I do this sort of thing for a living--I'm a patent searcher at a Fortune 500 company. I work with patent attorneys and do prior art searches--both for our own patent applications, and sometimes in the hopes of invalidating a competitor's patent.

    I estimate the cost to my company for me to do a prior art search--including my own time, and the cost of database searching (we use proprietary, for-pay patent databases which have many features not available through the free-on-the-internet databases such as USPTO and Delphion)--is typically in the range of $2000-$4000.

    Why some corporations are willing to pay in excess of $10000 for something that someone like me could do for much less, I don't know. OK, that's not quite true--I do know, in some cases. It might be well worthwhile for things like the guy who had the old product brochure--things like that are virtually impossible to search by conventional methods. But in some fields, for a lot of the "bounties" that are up, if prior art exists, it is almost certain to be either in patents or in the research literature, both of which can be searched quite thoroughly by someone like me.

    (Why don't I go and look for prior art on these bounties then? Well, for those in my field, BountyQuest's client is probably a competitor of my company's, and doing so would violate my employment agreement. I might try it at some point for some of the bounties in other fields, but I wouldn't expect to be too successful since the field is not my area of expertise.)

    Not that I'm complaining--if you can get a company to pay you $10000 for information that they should be able to get for under $5000, more power to you.

    How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?

    Because if prior art exists and they're aware of it, they must report it in their patent application. If they don't, it's grounds for invalidating the patent. Normally, it's very difficult to prove that a company knew about any given piece of prior art, so invalidations on these grounds are rare. However, if the prior art had been delivered to them by an outside company (and presumably this information could be subpoenaed), then it could be proven.

    Can I say for sure that companies still won't use the information for their own patent and deliberately fail to cite the prior art they know about? No. But they're taking a very big risk if they do.

  • That doesn't work and you know it. I asked a serious question, and I'd like a serious answer, please.

    If I implement or expand on someone else's idea or invention, what has been stolen from them? What have they lost?

    "Taking something that doesn't belong to you is the definition of theft."

    Right. So, what exactly has been taken?
  • Yes I have been thinking about this problem for a while now and have managed to find simple solution. Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that I think that the patent system should stay in place for the Bio industry, but not because there is a fundamental flaw in my thinking that ideas should not be owned, but because the costs to get into the Bio-space game are so financially prohibative for Joe Scientist alone that getting rid of the patents to help Joe Scientist would be moot. This is not and has never been the case for the software industry, except for maybe in the mainframe days.

    See in the software industry patents don't make sense because the little guy can compete with the big guy for very little cost. Any little guy can come up with the next killer app and make money, albeit indirectly in an IP-less world, but nevertheless make money (more on this on another occasion). But Joe Scientist stands no chance in hell of making a drug with just a couple of thousand dollars, much less make money off of it. You and I know that he needs a lab to even get off the ground floor. So because getting rid of patents in the Bio industry wouldn't help Joe Scientist to compete with the big bio companies anyway, there is no immediate benefit to getting rid of it in this industry. But let me stress this is only for the time being

    What needs to be done is get rid of patents in phases according to how easy it is for the little guy to compete with the big guys in the industry.

    Until it is as cheap for a scientist to create a drug as it is for a programmer to create a program, then I don't see any immediate need to get rid of patents in the Bio-industry. But that day will come and when it does we should get rid of patents in this industry as well.

    -= Griffis =-

  • isn't up to the patenter (is that a word) to actively look for prior art?

    Heavy duty disclaimers: IANAL, I have a bad memory, and this is based on things that I can't remember the sources on and might have been wrong to begin with.

    As I understand it, the patenter is required to disclose any known prior art. As such, it's in the patenter's best interest not to look too deeply. One could argue that BountyQuest demonstrates that a thorough prior art search is outside the abilities of an individual or even a single organization. If I'm a patenter, I can't publically inquire, "Anyone have prior art on the concept of attaching a foo and bar together to form a reticulated baz?" without jeopardizing my ability to get a patent on that idea even if no prior art exists.

    Similarly, I'd suspect that companies have done at least some preliminary prior art research before posting a $10k prior art bounty. If a single organization that was motivated to find prior art can't find it, what're the odds of someone who doesn't want to find the prior art finding it?

    And adding a general "loser pays on a patent challenge" system would only serve to further shift patents into the domain of corporations, where a few broken patents would be considered acceptable losses in the context of a wide variety of patents that hold up.

  • Hypothetical situation. You invent something. You apply for a patent. You spend thousands of dollars doing a patent search, which turns up no prior art. You go into business.

    A few years later, somebody turns up with evidence of prior art that your patent search missed. Should you now be treated like some kind of thief? How long should you have continued the patent search? You say "enough" should be done, but what does that mean? Keep seaching until you find something?

    It seems to me that once somebody has done a reasonable search for other pending patents, they should be allowed to go forward with their invention without fear of reprisal.

    Software is another matter entirely... I don't think patents should apply to instruction language. That should be covered by copyright, exclusively. (IMHO, of course.)

  • I think the bounties are posted by competing companies (or companies threatened with patent liscensing lawsuits). I think Micron, Hitachi, etc. would pay a lot more than $10k to find some prior art on Rambus's DDR patens.

  • Given that they're looking for prior art on specific company's patents, I'm guessing they have clients who are willing to pay for this as a service. Their clients, in fact, are probably being sued by said companies for patent infringement.

    Just a guess though...
  • Of course, a rating of Redundant basically means 'we know' :)

    The 'bots must think that the giver is cool....
  • Anyway I just had an interesting idea for a way to discourage bad patents. What about imposing a fine on companies who patent things that are subsequently invalidated due to prior art (or any other reason)?

    The problem I see with this is that it is a bit unfair towards people or companies who file for patents in good faith, who are genuinly unaware of prior art... Perhaps if you could somehow prove that the patent holder was aware of it when they filed for the patent...

    -Dorsey

  • What I really like is that they put a bounty on their own business methods patent -- and it's been closed (bounty paid)!http://www.bountyquest.com/bounties/displayB ounty.php?bountyName=1026
  • The AltaVista patent is a good example. Given a problem (i.e. how to search the web) AltaVista claims to have patented a solution. But, as has been mentioned before, it is also the "obvious" solution to any Software Engineer faced with the problem.

    I wouldn't jump to blame the Patent Office itself on this. It's true that they let a lot of garbage get through, but the Patent Office simply cannot allocate resources to hire a software engineer to analyze each software-related patent to determine whether or not it would be considered too "obvious".

    The Patent Office's job is to research old patents, and determine whether an application is unique. The tests for prior art and/or obviousness are left to the general public.

  • I just left the employ of Motorola, where I had a QUICC manual on my desk. If only I'd known it was worth $10,000...
  • "members of the PAN Network were a major force in the creation of the MIDI digital audio standard" Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Its about communication. S'got f'kall to do with audio.
  • If you look at their fee schedule, in "poster's world", you'll find that the person or company offering the bounty pays:

    o The bounty
    o a $2500 listing fee
    o 40% of the bounty if an exact match is found.

  • What if the Wright brothers had patented their flying machine?

    They tried.

    Actually, they knew that they couldn't patent flight or even manned-flight. So they tried patenting a means for controling an aircraft. Unfortunately for them, the method they used involved literally twisting the wing (AKA wing warping). Glenn Curtis came up with (and patented) the idea of controlling the aircraft by putting little moveable tabs (ailerons) on the trailing edges of the wings and went around them.

    "The court battle over this patent between Curtis and the Wright Brothers significantly delayed the development of aviation for many years." ( http://flightsimtraining.com/FlyOne.html )

    (See also google: "wright curtis patent")

  • by AndyMan! ( 31066 ) <chicagoandy@gmail . c om> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @02:04PM (#469221)
    Their "about" section is meaningless. All we know that is that they're a: a company, b: partly owned by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Besos. Of course we all know that Jeff Besos is responsible for one of the more ludicrous "business logic" patents.

    If you look at their corporate identity, all they talk about is how they're trying to "Market Reform" the patent process. What does this mean?

    It seems to me that

    a: they're a for profit corporation.
    b: they have clients.
    c: these clients pay for their services.

    My question is this: Who are their clients, and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?

    How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
  • by ttyRazor ( 20815 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @02:05PM (#469222)
    Another good example is the steam engine, which WAS patented. The firt steam engines were large and unwieldly, with limited use. They were leased out to people instead of sold. Although there were a number of engineers who had ideas for improvements for size, weight, and efficiency, the patent holders feared that the engines were already at the limits of safety, and anything lighter or smaller would be too fragile and dangerous. Consequently, they withheld liscensing and prevented the development of the steam engines that drove the Industrial Revolution by several years.
  • If we didn't have Patents, there would be no way of regulating someone elses invention. No one likes getting their ideas taken away from them. It's like that movie, Young Einstein, where he splits an atom to put bubbles into beer. That guy who runs the patent office steals his formula, which he was trying to patent. Then he uses his powers of rock and roll to save the day. Goodie. -Captain Nacho ------------ Stupid comments.
  • I'm nowhere near an expert in patent law, but it looks like these examples of prior art should be patent busters. After all, from my limited understanding, you can't patent something that has either been done before, or that has been 'released' to the public domain.

    Eric Gearman
    --
  • by AntiFreeze ( 31247 ) <antifreeze42&gmail,com> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:39PM (#469228) Homepage Journal
    Slashdot has had so many articles about patents and patent-law that I know this is a moot point, but I'll repeat it anyway.

    Just because there is prior art does not mean that the patent will become invalidated.

    Read this response [slashdot.org] by werdna to the article about Archie [slashdot.org] posted a few days ago, I think it's very clear on this point.

  • by abcbooze ( 245097 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:41PM (#469231)
    this sounds a lot better than kicking in doors in trailor parks for $300 a pop.
  • when it comes to software patents, there's no (business) incentive to write narrow independent claims. your average patent attorney seems to tell you, "write the claims as broadly as you possibly can, making sure that your actual invention (the thing you really understand to be your idea) is described in a dependent claim somewhere." so if you think you're patenting a novel method of toasting bread, you may wind up effectively patenting the concept of toasting bread.

    if the USPTO lets it slide (which they often do not, but sometimes they do), you totally win. the fact that there's prior art only helps someone who's really willing to fight in court instead of (1) settling or (2) licensing or (3) entering into a cross-licensing agreement.

    if they do catch you in the application process, you just rejig the application or file a continuation in a way that preserves the original filing date - no harm, no foul.

    While that used to work, it will no longer. I cannot emphasize enough how enormously, incredibly, utterly huge the Festo case is in this regard. Any strategy that began with a few broad claims that were amended to make hay is destined to yield a meaningless patent -- the doctrine of equivalents now has absolutely no application to any element that was the subject of an amendment related to patentability.

    Having actually tried a number of these cases, I can tell you that when literal infringement is all that is on the table, patents are easily --often trivially-- engineered around; you simply substitute any known equivalent for something in the claim and you are out of court on Summary Judgment.

    And, the neatest thing is this: Festo applies retroactively!!! All those cruddy patents with six-year prosecution histories are suddenly toothless.

    Read the case. It will make you smile.
  • by vergil ( 153818 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <bligrev>> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @02:22PM (#469242) Journal
    That's a very insightful clarification -- thanks for pointing it out. I'd like to ask you a question I've been mulling over (please excuse my ignorance):

    Does the USPTO have quotas for rewarding examiners who crank out the most approvals -- in other words, does the USPTO have institutionalized ways (including financial bonuses) of encouraging more patents "out the door?"

    Thanks.

    Sincerely,
    Vergil
    Vergil Bushnell

  • The ownership of Rdb is completely irrelevant.

    It doesn't matter in the slightest who originally published the technique. It's the simple fact that it was published that makes it prior art.

  • Patents are a necessary way to protect those who invest a lot of time innovating otherwise, where is the motive if you know someone is going to steal your work. The trick is to differentiate between what most people consider real patents vs frivolous patents. A new non-obvious "fool proof" encryption scheme would seem worthy of a patent to me. On the other hand, trying to patent hyperlinks, etc... is a waste of everybody's time. Ohhh, I think I'll patent the concept of "Table of contents", then all book publishers can pay me BIG money.
  • by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:43PM (#469251)
    Patents for which there is prior are are just plain invalid - they damage the overall economy, and it's the filer's own fault for not doing the reseach before filing.

    God forbid we should try to prevent people from getting government-protected monopolies on the obvious! It will wreck the nation!

    Sheesh.
  • The patent system will be effected. They are attacking the companies that took advantage of the weak system. By doing so they are forcing the patents to only be of value if the are actually for innovation. I applaud what they are doing and hope they keep it up.

    -chaswell
  • by Booker ( 6173 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:45PM (#469253) Homepage
    This could help people seeking to hold patents, as well.

    If you can get decisive information that the patent you were going to apply for has prior art, it could save you a lot more than the $10k bounty.

    If Mr. Bezos puts up $10k for some seemingly simple, obvious patent, and nobody can refute it or come up w/ prior art, he can feel pretty secure about going ahead with it, and saving court costs down the line...

    ---

  • by lrichardson ( 220639 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:46PM (#469254) Homepage
    Why are they attacking the companies, when the companies have done nothing wrong?

    Nothing wrong?!?! Excuse me, but they've patented something they had no right to. They've threatened people with lawsuits for 'infringement', when they themselves have either no right to make the claim, or are guilty of the same offense. There's nothing wrong with making an honest living ... threatening other people with cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money, when they have no legal right to do so, does not qualify as 'honest'

  • Are you trying to suggest that the USPTO examiners are going to know more about technology than the Slashdot readership?

    Im pretty confident in my understanding of Computer Tech - maybe a USPTO examiner will have equal understanding, but you cannot suggest the total knowledge of that USPTO couldnt be 'aided' by the input of the "Slashdot" Readership...

  • BountyQuest agrees, Werdna agrees, and I agree completely: for legal challenge, that's the strongest evidence you can find. My point is that creating a strong legal argument isn't the purpose of a Slashdot discussion.
  • Bountyquest only pays for prior art upon which the patent claims read completely. Earlier art which is read on by only some of the elements is ineligible.

    Of course they only pay for that kind of information; I didn't say anything to the contrary. BountyQuest tries to find prior art for legal purposes. Slashdot is not a court of law; we discuss policy.

    The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.

    I understand the legal issues just fine. The question underlying discussions on Slashdot, however, is what the policy ought to be and whether current legal practice expresses those policies.

    I believe that in this case there is ample prior art that ought to be relevant. Based on what I know, it also appears that such an argument would be difficult to make in court, precisely for the reasons you keep restating.

    So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.

    Patent law is not divine, it is created by humans for utilitarian purposes. We need to figure out whether it serves those purposes and fix it if it doesn't.

  • I think the government only takes your taxes at gunpoint if you're in some fundamentalist cult

    Only in the literal sense. Look at it this way - if a mugger says "Give me your money or I'll get a gun out of my car and shoot you", is that or is that not, for all intents and purposes "at gunpoint" (presuming, of course, he actually has a gun in his car)?

    The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true.

    The government says "give me your money, or I'll send somebody with a gun over to take it from you, and throw you in jail and/or shoot you."...


    ---
    "They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
  • So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.

    Your claim is that the law is at variance from the uninformed intuition of what is the law. So what? This is true, to some extent, about almost EVERY substantive area of law. While it might seem nice if lawyers were not necessary to give sound legal advice through the mine fields of various areas of the law, there doesn't exist a developed nation that has figured out quite how to do that.

    With respect to your suggestion about patent law, even if I were to grant your proposition, I seriously doubt that arguing that patent law is "counterintuitive" to some lay audiences would ever yield meaningful, or perhaps even positive, change by policymakers, who are far more concerned with far more practical issues.

    At any rate, you are making an argument different from the original subject of this thread, which was the suggestion that a patent owned by Altavista somehow "covered" Archie -- by reference to the legal questions of validity and infringement. The article and responses made assertions about the legal validity of patents, and I responded to clarify the finer points of law.

    You didn't find it relevant or interesting, but many others did. I agree that on Slashdot, we are free to argue what the law should be -- and to raise and debate questions of policy. Right on! However, it is silly to argue about what is the law, and to criticize what is the law, without knowing what is the law.

    At any rate, it is long past time for us to simply agree to disagree, at least for this thread. Perhaps we can engage once more on the next substantive question.

    I don't doubt that an informed discussion of policy is important. So is an informed discussion of the law supposedly supporting that policy.

  • by q000921 ( 235076 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @03:45PM (#469269)
    I don't understand why people repeatedly bring up this obvious point. Nothing guarantees that a legal challenge is ultimately going to be successful. There are many valid legal challenges that are abandoned and fail even if all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed. That doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about it.

    The fact remains that one of the best bets for having a patent invalidated is published prior art that is not already cited in the patent. That is exactly the prior art BountyQuest is looking for.

    The article you refer to doesn't even make this point. Werdna argues that for prior art to be useful in a legal challenge it needs to be compared point-by-point against the claims. That, too, is missing the point in finding prior art in the first place. You need to identify potential prior art before you can do the point-by-point comparison. In addition to prior art, there are challenges based on "obviousness". They are a lot harder, but they, too, require identifying related work.

    But discussions of prior art and practice doesn't just serve specific legal challenges, it also helps us with applying political pressure on the patent system. A system that grants patents on techniques that were published decades ago in textbooks, and that entangles users of such techniques in long legal battles, is broken, and the more examples we can find for that, the better.

    Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy. The lawyers that challenge these patents in court presumably know what they are doing and don't need our advice.

  • by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @12:46PM (#469270)
    This contest does not damage the patent holders. All they are doing is giving a little money to people who may or may not be about to sue some patent holders for prior art.

    It all ammounts to a massive PR campaign to make one of the worst villians of patent law look like one of our best heroes. (cough *Bezos* cough)

  • As Bill Gates knows, to simply make your product and sell it to the consumer is not enough.
    You have to do all of the above plus stop your competitors from doing the same.

    Patents accomplish this. Even the US Gov't knows that monopolies are bad and that anticompetitive moves hurt the consumer (well sometimes they know..), but patents are simply monopolies on ideas aimed at stifling the competition.

    Copyleft [gnu.org] is a way to work with the system to stop the abuses. Basically you can copyright an idea, but not charge anyone for using, thus keeping anyone else from creating a monopoly on your idea.

    Food for thought.

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