Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?

Alberto Gonzales Finds A Job: Helping To Settle Patent Trolling Disputes

from the easier-than-fighting-terrorism dept

Tue, Jun 17th 2008 3:16pm — Mike Masnick

Back in April, the NY Times had reported that former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was having trouble finding a job. However, it appears that he's now found at least a temporary one: sorting through a patent mess. Against Monopoly points out that Gonzales has been hired as a "special master" to help sort through the legal issues in a high profile patent lawsuit.

This particular lawsuit is doubly interesting, because politicians have gotten involved. On the face of it, it looks like a typical patent holding lawsuit, where a company (that doesn't do anything) holds a very broad patent on the concept of automatic check scanning. It's suing a whole bunch of banks for their use of automatic check scanning without paying a big licensing fee for permission to do so. Where it's gotten ridiculous is that politicians dumped some language into a bill to exempt banks from having to obey this patent. That may create the right result (not forcing banks to license this unnecessary patent), but in a very, very bad way. Congress shouldn't be creating exceptions. It should be fixing the patent system.

In the meantime, given Gonzales' already seriously skewed view of intellectual property law (he wanted to make "attempted copyright infringement" a criminal offense and pushed for other laws that would greatly increase the coverage of copyright law), it seems unlikely that he's going to recognize just how damaging patents are in these sorts of cases.

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Filed Under: alberto gonzales, check scanning, patents
Companies: data treasury

17 Comments

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some old guy, 17 Jun 2008 @ 4:25pm

whoa
that's downright scary
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Jake, 17 Jun 2008 @ 4:45pm

Look on the bright side. He can't do much harm with that compared to what happened in his old job, can he?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2008 @ 4:45pm

Summary -> "Gonzales' already seriously skewed view of intellectual property law "

You are being too nice to the guy.
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- ehrichweiss, 17 Jun 2008 @ 5:01pm
  
  Re:
  "Gonzales' already seriously skewed view of FREEDOM"
  
  FTFY, Mike!! ;)
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Willton, 17 Jun 2008 @ 5:13pm

Wrong job title
Gonzalez has not been hired as a special master; he's been hired as an assistant to the special master. The special master is a former U.S.D.J. from Oklahoma.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2008 @ 7:52pm

I hear Gonzalez immediately fired all disloyal jurors.
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angry dude, 17 Jun 2008 @ 8:34pm

Good job shilling for your corporate masters
The DataTreasury patent was thorougly challenged both in court and in the USPTO and withstood all challenges
Now it's time to pay up for all those *willful* infringers of a valid US Patent, right ?

Wrong, according to Mikey
Because the infringers happen to be the largest US banks
They already attempted to buy their little piece of that legislative scam called Congressional "patent reform of 2007" but failed so far...
More money to spend on lobbyists and mass media including this shitty inet blog
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- LittleTechdirt Lemming Punk, 17 Jun 2008 @ 8:44pm
  
  Re: Good job shilling for your corporate masters
  Not only is it a BS patent ... but it is an asshole put in charge. Big suprise that AD is all in favor of Alberto and his puppet masters
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  - Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2008 @ 9:53pm
    
    Re: Re: Good job shilling for your corporate masters
    Pray tell, why is this a "BS patent"? Have you ever studied it? I think not.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 18 Jun 2008 @ 5:37am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Good job shilling for your corporate masters
      AC -> why is this a "BS patent"?
      
      Oh please ... are you serious ?
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      - Willton, 18 Jun 2008 @ 7:15am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Good job shilling for your corporate masters
        I imagine he's very serious. Perhaps you can enlighten us all as to why it's "BS."
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        Anonymous Coward, 18 Jun 2008 @ 4:50pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good job shilling for your corporate masters
        Willton -> to why it's "BS."
        
        1) being filed in E. Texas
        2) patent 5,910,988
        3) patent 6,032,137
        ... The system retrieves transaction data such as credit card receipts checks in either electronic or paper form at one or more remote locations, encrypts the data, transmits the encrypted data to a central location, transforms the data to a usable form, performs identification verification using signature data and biometric data, generates informative reports from the data and transmits the informative reports to the remote location(s).
        
        Wow, this these patents are really unique and non obvious. You have convinced me that I should review the patents in question before making blanket statements about their non bullshittedness.
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Jason, 17 Jun 2008 @ 11:54pm

Master Gonzalez
...it appears the clones were commissioned by a Jedi named Cipher Diaz
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stv, 18 Jun 2008 @ 11:08am

unnecessary
Intellectual property is property. Who owns it obtains the rights it confers. Whether or not they “do anything” as you say is immaterial. You own a house, right? Well my guess is that even though you probably didn’t build it yourself you expect all benefits of ownership just as if you had built it with your own hands. Get the picture?

As to your charge of “unnecessary patent”, it sounds to me to be quite the opposite. If these big banks felt it was unnecessary they wouldn’t be going through so much trouble.

When corporate America agrees to not use our inventions without consent, American inventors and small entities will agree to stop suing them.
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Fred Baum, 23 Sep 2008 @ 4:42am

Datatreasury
Regarding Datatreasury
When you hire 100 people and spend 20 million on computers to do the work, that hardly makes you a company that does nothing ,except that the company you showed your technology to decides to steal it. Secondly even if that was the case that you just owned the property that would and should be enough as you own it . Intelecctual Property is one of the few things left in this country , we should not allow to be confiscated as we have the best patent system in the world by some special interest groups(the whole world comes here to register there patents) , intelligent people need to look at a big picture rather than one that saves or lines their pockets in the immediate present otherwise our children will be making toys for the children in the rest of the world.
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mike pitman, 18 Dec 2008 @ 10:52pm

Gonzales
Comment?

He should face charges for lies.

Americans and Iraqis have died.

He can not be trusted.

Ever!
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- anonymous spook, 2 Apr 2009 @ 10:29am
  
  Re: Gonzales
  No he didn't. Countries formerly loyal to America were turning around and orbiting around a defient Saddam, like Jordan, it was creating the groundwork for ongoing terrorism against the USA, he had a massive training camp training Al Qaeda and other terrorists on the NE Iranian Iraqi border, AND Saddam had ordered six nuclear weapons from Pakistan's AQ Khan Network and significant weapons grade fuel from Bulgaria's rogue mafia who happened to have a bunch of yellowcake. And it was Colin Powell, not Gonzales!
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