August 29, 2014
Am 29.08.2014 04:15, schrieb Dicebot:
> On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 02:10:57 UTC, Russel Winder via
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> Jérôme,
>>
>> On Thu, 2014-08-28 at 11:53 +0200, "Jérôme M. Berger" via Digitalmars-d
>> wrote:
>> […]
>>> PPS: IANAL but I have had lots of contacts with patent lawyers and I
>>> have taken part in several patent disputes as an expert witness.
>>> However, this was in France so most of my knowledge applies to
>>> French law and things may be different in the US.
>>
>> Are you tracking the new EU unitary patent and TTIP activity? We need to
>> make sure the US does impose on the EU the same insane patent framework
>> the US has.
>
> Any links to quickly get into the topic? This is first time I hear about
> it.

What's really bad is that there is also CETA, which is an agreement between the EU and Canada, and which is nothing than an inconspicuous back door to achieve much of the same thing as TTIP. Unfortunately it has gotten basically no media attention at all (at least in Germany, TTIP has been mentioned several times at least), despite being ratified soon, and despite its potentially far reaching consequences for the western society in general.

You can get an overview on Wikipedia. Apart from the patent system and several environmental "unifications", an especially concerning part is ISDS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership#National_sovereignty_and_Investor_State_Dispute_Settlements_.28ISDS.29


August 29, 2014
On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 10:06:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 10:01:17 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> On 8/28/2014 1:04 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 09:27:19PM -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, and the form rejects all attempts to disclose prior art without
>>>> a patent number.
>>>>
>>>> Reminds me of obamacare.gov :-)
>>>
>>> 	Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by
>>> 	incompetence. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
>>>
>>> ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>> (P.S. Yes, I know the quote has probably been misattributed to Napoleon,
>>> but I forgot who the real author is/was since I failed to update my sigs
>>> file last time.)
>>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
>>
>> One of my personal favorite quotes.
>
> If something is incredibly stupid, it's often by design. (It's usually 50+ year later that people find out)

"This reliability, combined with zero cost, poses a serious challenge to commercial outfits trying to sell their often bug-ridden programs. No one is more affected by this dichotomy than Microsoft, the most successful company ever built on the traditional software model."  -- Glyn Moody

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/jan/25/hacking.security

Coincidence me a*se!
August 29, 2014
On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 02:10:40 UTC, Brad Roberts via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 8/27/2014 12:11 AM, via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
> In the US, filing a patent app requires about $10k and a good lawyer. It's not in the realm of most small entities to do.  It's a seriously bad use of $10k.  The best defense is prior art, and there's a ton of it.  I say this having my name on a handful of applications and one granted patent.

Once the patent is granted, it would take a LOT of money to prove that it's invalid: usually you do that when you are forced by the fact that the patent holder has brought you in front of a judge.

A much better strategy is to file the patent office the prior art _during_ the examination: or the patent is not granted, or it's stated _on paper_ that the patent does not comprehend what you have indicated as prior art, that usually it's related to your business (and it's a no-costs action).

Well, if ignored, you can bring that action in front of the judge at least!

So, Walter, go ahead with filing documentation to the USPO.

---
Paolo
August 29, 2014
On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 10:30:49 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> What's really bad is that there is also CETA, which is an agreement between the EU and Canada, and which is nothing than an inconspicuous back door to achieve much of the same thing as TTIP. Unfortunately it has gotten basically no media attention at all (at least in Germany, TTIP has been mentioned several times at least), despite being ratified soon, and despite its potentially far reaching consequences for the western society in general.
>
> You can get an overview on Wikipedia. Apart from the patent system and several environmental "unifications", an especially concerning part is ISDS:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership#National_sovereignty_and_Investor_State_Dispute_Settlements_.28ISDS.29

I don't want to live on this planet anymore >_<
..yet again.
August 29, 2014
On 29 August 2014 10:32, Chris via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>> In fact, the patent looks like an explanation of how immutability works in D.
>
>
> This is why I don't believe in "coincidence". This could be either an attempt to crush D or some people might have realized that D's way of handling immutability is the way to go and they want to own it (or both). Where I'm from this is called "rip-off", "theft" or just "being a c**t".
>

This is just FUD.

Software patents in practice are now not only of generally poor quality, they are totally opposed to their original reason for existence.

>From my observation (newspapers, mostly), having a software patent is
utterly useless, and not being tied to any particular network or device just doesn't hold water nowadays in court (in varying degrees across countries).

Iain
August 29, 2014
>>
>> Any links to quickly get into the topic? This is first time I hear about
>> it.
>
> What's really bad is that there is also CETA, which is an agreement between the EU and Canada, and which is nothing than an inconspicuous back door to achieve much of the same thing as TTIP. Unfortunately it has gotten basically no media attention at all (at least in Germany, TTIP has been mentioned several times at least), despite being ratified soon, and despite its potentially far reaching consequences for the western society in general.
>
> You can get an overview on Wikipedia. Apart from the patent system and several environmental "unifications", an especially concerning part is ISDS:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership#National_sovereignty_and_Investor_State_Dispute_Settlements_.28ISDS.29

The Süddeutsche Zeitung has an interesting series on the topic (unfortunately German only):
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/thema/TTIP-Recherche

There is also http://stop-ttip.org .
August 29, 2014
On Friday, 29 August 2014 at 12:27:59 UTC, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 29 August 2014 10:32, Chris via Digitalmars-d
> <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>> In fact, the patent looks like an explanation of how immutability works in
>>> D.
>>
>>
>> This is why I don't believe in "coincidence". This could be either an
>> attempt to crush D or some people might have realized that D's way of
>> handling immutability is the way to go and they want to own it (or both).
>> Where I'm from this is called "rip-off", "theft" or just "being a c**t".
>>
>
> This is just FUD.

Nevertheless, it should be taken seriously. Dismissing it as irrelevant could be a terrible mistake. Better safe than sorry.

Big companies go to the rain forests in Latin America to get a patent on herbs and plants used as medicine, only to sue the medicine men who've been using the same herbs and plants for thousands of years. Speaking of not wanting to live on this planet anymore ...

> Software patents in practice are now not only of generally poor
> quality, they are totally opposed to their original reason for
> existence.
>
>>From my observation (newspapers, mostly), having a software patent is
> utterly useless, and not being tied to any particular network or
> device just doesn't hold water nowadays in court (in varying degrees
> across countries).
>
> Iain

I hope you're right.
August 30, 2014
Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/28/2014 2:53 AM, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
>> 	I should have said that in D it is used when declaring an instance
>> (i.e. at the place of the instance declaration) whereas in the
>> patent it is used when declaring the type. For a patent lawyer, this
>> will be enough to say that the patent is new.
> 
> Um,
> 
>     alias immutable(char)[] string;
> 
> is declaring a type. It is not used in this case as a storage class, and there is no instance being declared. String is indeed a type.
> 
> 
>> 	Aliases are not really prior art either since they do not allow
>> creating an immutable type without also creating the corresponding
>> mutable type.
> 
> This seems to me to be reductio ad absurdum.

	Yes it is, but that's lawyers for you. I've had a lawyer arguing
that an article does not constitute prior art for a patent because
the article is about a submodule in a video *encoder* whereas the
patent is about a submodule in a video *decoder*, and that even
though most of the patent is a verbatim copy of the article text...

> And how does the patent say an immutable T is to be created without saying T anywhere?
> 
	That is the point, you don't create an "immutable T", you create an
"immutable class ..." without ever naming the class.

		Jerome
August 30, 2014
Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 08/28/2014 11:53 AM, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
>> ...
>>
>> 	I should have said that in D it is used when declaring an instance
>> (i.e. at the place of the instance declaration) whereas in the
>> patent it is used when declaring the type. For a patent lawyer, this
>> will be enough to say that the patent is new.
>> ...
> 
> This works as expected:
> 
> immutable class C{
>      // ...
> }
> 
	Then we should be ok, assuming we can prove it already worked a
year and a half ago.

		Jerome
August 30, 2014
On Saturday, 30 August 2014 at 09:00:24 UTC, Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
> Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 08/28/2014 11:53 AM, "Jérôme M. Berger" wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>> 	I should have said that in D it is used when declaring an instance
>>> (i.e. at the place of the instance declaration) whereas in the
>>> patent it is used when declaring the type. For a patent lawyer, this
>>> will be enough to say that the patent is new.
>>> ...
>> 
>> This works as expected:
>> 
>> immutable class C{
>>      // ...
>> }
>> 
> 	Then we should be ok, assuming we can prove it already worked a
> year and a half ago.
>
> 		Jerome

Who said anything about it having to work?