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RE: Disappointed, yet..not surprised (was Re: Disap pointed)

2004-09-24 06:52:12
Having once been involved in processing the whitehouse mail I agree with
Anne. Form letters are much less persuasive than individual ones,
particularly through email.


Some points:

1) Only the original patent application has been published. We do not know
what claims have been struck out or withdrawn since or for that matter
added.

2) The point that you consider most important may not be the point that is
most persuasive. Decide what you want to do, do you want to reform the
patent system or vent?


There are many problems with software patents. The ones held by large
corporations are individually not a big concern, the aggregate is. but even
one bad patent held by a patent troll can cause serious problems.

* Many of the software patents issued should be considered obvious because
they consist of nothing more than proposing to perform some well known and
understood practice in the context of a new technology platform. For example
'perform a Dutch auction on the Web', Dutch auctions have existed since the
tulip mania in the middle ages, the Web is simply a new communications
medium, there is nothing inventive about suggesting performing one in the
context of the other. As another example 'encode document of type X in XML'
where X is a well established document format. XML is simply a generic
encoding for data structures of every type. There is absolutely nothing
inventive in suggesting the combination.

* The cost of defending a patent lawsuit typically runs to more than $2
million dollars, in many cases very much more. Lax examination procedures
result in huge hidden costs for US businesses and put them at a serious
disadvantage with respect to competitors.

* For many years the USPTO has been encouraged to consider only the
interests of applicants and not of parties who may be subject to unjust and
unfair licensing claims. Although patent applications are made under penalty
of perjury this is never enforced, there is no penalty for a party who
knowningly makes a perjured patent application claiming the invention of
another. 

* The USPTO has attempted to circumvent the requirement for prior
publication of patents by setting rules which limit the extent to which
examiners may consider claims of prior art.

* The sheer number of frivolous claims granted by the USPTO makes it very
difficult for legitimate inventors to persuade potential licensees that
their patent is genuine. Increasingly applicants are encouraged to file in
other jurisdictions in order to give their claims credibility.




-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Hammer [mailto:dotzero(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com]
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 8:29 AM
To: spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] Disappointed, yet..not surprised (was Re:
Disap pointed)


First off, let me say that I'm not into MS bashing. Secondly IANAL. 

I did take the time to read the published patent applications several
times. I then went back to archives of (for example) the DRUMS list
and other earlier attempts to deal with spam and relaying issues. I
have a feeling (especially because folks from MS participated in some
of the efforts) that there is enough prior art /published information
that it would be rather straight forward to show that many of the
claims in the patent applications should not be granted. There's some
interesting stuff in earlier RFCs,Drafts and BIS if you do a little
digging.

There are some interesting discussions regarding envelope mailfrom
(specifically when RFC821 ans RFC822 were being created that would
indicate to me that MS would be hard pressed to claim they "invented"
this check. The specific context of some of the threads was with
regard to gateways from non-TCP systems/networks.

Instead of ranting about MS the evil empire or stopping the granting
of software patents, if you are truly serious about this issue then
folks will make an effort similar to what was done with SCO and their
intellectual property claims regarding UNIX and code.

As usual, just my 2 cents.

Mike

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