Do you think the Patent Law system in the US is broken? These people certainly think so, and now they're created a new site to help fix and regulate things : http://gigaom.com/2012/11/14/tech-firms-launch-new-website-to-fix-patent-mess/
Patent Progress is supposed to bring people's attention to the patent problem and to give solutions from people in legal and policy positions. Contributers on the advice side are people in leading intellectual property, lawyers, and scholars. The site is composed of a group that has bases in Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook.
The site has a dictionary of terms for people to look up, like patent trolls, and they explain many of the topics that a majority of people probably don't understand. I believe that this site will provide a great place for people to educate themselves on the patent issues we're facing today.
What do you think of this idea? Do you think it will work?
Friday, March 8, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Post 8: IBM: We’re number one (in patents)
Hello!
This is less about a patent more but I thought it would be interesting to note which companies have the most patents. http://gigaom.com/2013/01/10/ibm-were-number-one-in-patents/
Surprised? It's IBM! (I was.)
Interestingly enough, Google and Apple were both noted to have gained massive amounts of patents, but they still didn't break the top 10 companies. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen:
I was very surprised to see that a lot of the top patent carriers are International companies.
The article notes a very interesting idea:
"Patent ownership represents more than just bragging rights. Increasingly tech companies rush to amass patents to protect themselves from infringement lawsuits and to wage legal war on competitors. Complicating matters are the “patent trolls” – companies that buy patents to assemble a legal arsenal to go after alleged infringers but don’t actually create technology. "
In any case, if you want to perhaps figure out where to look in future posts for patent issues, you may want to follow these companies!
Post 7: Apple smart watch efforts confirmed by US patent
Helloooo
So I read this article on apple's new smart watch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21547947.
The article goes into the design and patent issues. This is supposed to be a flexible touch-screen (cool right?) and there's apparently a huge "need" for this item. If you can't imagine what it's supposed to look like, read this:
"The mooted device is likened to a "slap wrap" - a thin strip of metal covered in fabric which snapped around the user's wrist to form a bracelet."
They've just filed for a patent on this, but there might be issues coming up because a lot of tech watch companies are also working in this field. It's a weird mesh because the watch companies obviously have been working with these products for a long time and are developing similar things. Apple on the other hand is a giant tech firm who could supply the software and hardware side of it.
Nothing's happened yet, but if you like watches, maybe you should consider following this story to see where it leads.
So I read this article on apple's new smart watch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21547947.
The article goes into the design and patent issues. This is supposed to be a flexible touch-screen (cool right?) and there's apparently a huge "need" for this item. If you can't imagine what it's supposed to look like, read this:
"The mooted device is likened to a "slap wrap" - a thin strip of metal covered in fabric which snapped around the user's wrist to form a bracelet."
They've just filed for a patent on this, but there might be issues coming up because a lot of tech watch companies are also working in this field. It's a weird mesh because the watch companies obviously have been working with these products for a long time and are developing similar things. Apple on the other hand is a giant tech firm who could supply the software and hardware side of it.
Nothing's happened yet, but if you like watches, maybe you should consider following this story to see where it leads.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Post 6: Update on Samsung vs Apple
This post will be about the emailed out article: http://news.msn.com/science-technology/stalemate-between-apple-samsung-in-smartphone-wars
If you guys have been following this, it's been pretty intense for a while. Right now though, it seems like things have fallen into a stalemate between these two companies. To quote:
"Indeed, a series of recent court rulings suggests that the smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate, with Apple unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged when rivals, notably Samsung, imitated its products."
So what happens now?
It seems like both of these companies have greatly benefited from this war in some aspects. Cook apparently never really wanted to sue Samsung because of manufacturing diplomacy stuff, and Samsung got some pretty good market research data from selling phones that greatly resembled the iPhone.
The article is leaning towards the idea that these two super companies might actually band together in terms of furthering technology. They even go so far as to say that there might be a possibility these huge firms might go after some of the smaller ones like Blackberry.
In some aspects this legal war seems to be almost like a battle of who'd better. So perhaps they're squaring up and this war might result in some awesome technology as the battle to be the best. That would be a cool outcome though it might go in the opposite direction in terms of stifling innovation and iteration.
Did anyone else who read this article agree or disagree with it?
If you guys have been following this, it's been pretty intense for a while. Right now though, it seems like things have fallen into a stalemate between these two companies. To quote:
"Indeed, a series of recent court rulings suggests that the smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate, with Apple unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged when rivals, notably Samsung, imitated its products."
So what happens now?
It seems like both of these companies have greatly benefited from this war in some aspects. Cook apparently never really wanted to sue Samsung because of manufacturing diplomacy stuff, and Samsung got some pretty good market research data from selling phones that greatly resembled the iPhone.
The article is leaning towards the idea that these two super companies might actually band together in terms of furthering technology. They even go so far as to say that there might be a possibility these huge firms might go after some of the smaller ones like Blackberry.
In some aspects this legal war seems to be almost like a battle of who'd better. So perhaps they're squaring up and this war might result in some awesome technology as the battle to be the best. That would be a cool outcome though it might go in the opposite direction in terms of stifling innovation and iteration.
Did anyone else who read this article agree or disagree with it?
Post 5: Google accuses BT of patent trolls
Hey ya'll,
Here's an interesting yet short article that was uploaded yesterday: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/google-accuses-bt-of-arming-patent-trolls-in-new-lawsuit-1131280.
This stems from a acusation in 2011 where BT said that Google infrindged on 6 mobile patents in all different departments like Andriod, Maps, and Gmail. Now Google's basically claiming that BT used Google's patents for phone calls and networking.
They're trying to turn the tables on them for this, and they say that they have an army of patent trolls.
It's in the courts now, but it's really impressive that BT is heading up against Google, a huge giant in the industry. It will be an interesting story to follow along in the coming months.
Here's an interesting yet short article that was uploaded yesterday: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/google-accuses-bt-of-arming-patent-trolls-in-new-lawsuit-1131280.
This stems from a acusation in 2011 where BT said that Google infrindged on 6 mobile patents in all different departments like Andriod, Maps, and Gmail. Now Google's basically claiming that BT used Google's patents for phone calls and networking.
They're trying to turn the tables on them for this, and they say that they have an army of patent trolls.
It's in the courts now, but it's really impressive that BT is heading up against Google, a huge giant in the industry. It will be an interesting story to follow along in the coming months.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Post 4: Legal Issues
Hey ya'll,
So I remember reading back a while ago on HackerNews an article about a very particular legal case involving property. The story goes like this:
There's a guy, let's call him Mike (because I cannot remember or find the article anymore). Mike's spent a few years developing a mobile app, which he's pushed out to the app stores online. He's given it a name, lets call it FriendFinder, because it's relevant to what his app does.
Fast forward a bit and a start-up has pushed out a very similar product that does the same thing, and calls it FindFriends. This startup is backed up by a pretty impressive venture capitalist firm and within no time, Mike gets a email from their lawyers demanding he either he takes his app off the market or he sells over all his rights, data, and code to these guys, or else he's getting sued for it anyways.
Uhm...what?
When I read this I was super surprised but also a bit sad for this Mike fellow, because what can he really do to protect himself from this large company over this intellectual property? Considering the name and the product is so similar, is there definitive proof that someone has more ownership of it?
In the end, I never followed this story to see where it went, but let me know how ya'll feel about this situation.
So I remember reading back a while ago on HackerNews an article about a very particular legal case involving property. The story goes like this:
There's a guy, let's call him Mike (because I cannot remember or find the article anymore). Mike's spent a few years developing a mobile app, which he's pushed out to the app stores online. He's given it a name, lets call it FriendFinder, because it's relevant to what his app does.
Fast forward a bit and a start-up has pushed out a very similar product that does the same thing, and calls it FindFriends. This startup is backed up by a pretty impressive venture capitalist firm and within no time, Mike gets a email from their lawyers demanding he either he takes his app off the market or he sells over all his rights, data, and code to these guys, or else he's getting sued for it anyways.
Uhm...what?
When I read this I was super surprised but also a bit sad for this Mike fellow, because what can he really do to protect himself from this large company over this intellectual property? Considering the name and the product is so similar, is there definitive proof that someone has more ownership of it?
In the end, I never followed this story to see where it went, but let me know how ya'll feel about this situation.
Post 3: Monday Class Post
Hey ya'll,
So today we covered patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and other things related to these. To be honest I'm still a little confused on the difference between all three, because it seems like there's a gray area when it comes to distinguishing them.
Let's take Google as an example. The Google logo is a trademark, and to make things really simple, let's look at their search engine. This search engine is pretty much a ton of code and algorithms that involves many processes and hardware even to complete, servers, warehouses, etc.
We can define Google's search engine as a trade secret in a sense, no? I've studied before how they approach the search function and at it's very basic point, it's a implementation of PageRank, an algorithm. It's definitely not open sourced, and people can have little search bars on their pages to allow users to search within that site itself for things. PageRank is what started Google off so I definitely don't think they'd want to release it. However, PageRank is actually considered a patent, because, well, it's patented by Google.
So which is it? A patent or a trade secret? I guess the easiest way to explain it is that PageRank itself is a patented product, but the trade secret lies in all the secret criteria they use it in to figure out how to best rank pages in a Google Search.
Agree or not? Let me know in the comments belooowwww!
So today we covered patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and other things related to these. To be honest I'm still a little confused on the difference between all three, because it seems like there's a gray area when it comes to distinguishing them.
Let's take Google as an example. The Google logo is a trademark, and to make things really simple, let's look at their search engine. This search engine is pretty much a ton of code and algorithms that involves many processes and hardware even to complete, servers, warehouses, etc.
We can define Google's search engine as a trade secret in a sense, no? I've studied before how they approach the search function and at it's very basic point, it's a implementation of PageRank, an algorithm. It's definitely not open sourced, and people can have little search bars on their pages to allow users to search within that site itself for things. PageRank is what started Google off so I definitely don't think they'd want to release it. However, PageRank is actually considered a patent, because, well, it's patented by Google.
So which is it? A patent or a trade secret? I guess the easiest way to explain it is that PageRank itself is a patented product, but the trade secret lies in all the secret criteria they use it in to figure out how to best rank pages in a Google Search.
Agree or not? Let me know in the comments belooowwww!
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