There's a number of links in the story so you could try to link on those. And, as other posters say, the story is getting picked up and broken elsewhere, the EFF among others. I haven't checked up on my other source sites when something like this breaks.
As for source documents, did you miss the point that there ARE none? At least other than what ICE has released thus far which are damning enough as it is.
And why would the site's lawyer lie about things when there's a lawsuit being considered? While, for the most part, courts ignore the rantings of lawyers to the media where constitutional cases are concerned they tend to pay more attention and in cases such as this a lot of attention as his comments and outline of events amount to evidence.
Actually, Mike's journalistic standards are pretty good all things considered. But he's not a journalist in the sense that he's writing up an "objective"* news story he's an editorialist and commentator which is different. So your complaints there are "without merit" to use a legal term for such things.
As for your closing sentence you ARE, in fact, accusing him of making this up in whole or part. In a very nice way that isn't actionable but you are accusing him of exactly what you say you aren't.
* (objective news) if you believe in that you believe in things like the tooth fairy and think that Nigerian Scam email you saw this morning is real.
If you get a brown legal sized envelope from the office of the clerk of Court A you don't release it. If you do you won't get another one. It's called a leak.
If the sites decide to follow this up with lawsuits of their own we'll find out more.
Maybe. Hard to find shredded papers and non-existent recordings. Just ask Richard Nixon.
Nahh, he'll be fired then put in charge of the FBI. This deserves a promotion. After all the FBI has a history of ignoring constitutional protections and getting away with it. For decades, as I recall.
Generally patents were intended to cover a specific invention that performed a specific function. The intention was to provide the inventor(s) with a small time period in which they enjoyed a monopoly over that invention.
The idea was that by granting patents one would reduce the number of trade secrets and open up general knowledge in the field.
I don't know that any of that is arguable. It ought not to be.
Patent law has extended itself, like a cancer, to include process which isn't a physical manifestion of anything nor does it lead to a product in the physical world. All these patents do is lead to walling up knowledge and it's application which is the polar opposite of what patents are or, at least, were the intention of patents.
My problem with patenting any kind of diagnositc technique or process is that all diagnostics are, in some small form or other, different. What appears, on the surface, to be the same presenting problem, can often turn out to be something entirely different than what process and past experience says it ought to be. This applies to trouble shooting as much as it applies to a medical diagnosis though the outcomes in medicine are far more important, in the vast majority of cases, than me diagnosing and repairing a telecom transmission problem.
Should a patent interfere with the doctor taking her were she needs to go on what I present.then the patent system has failed. A GP ought not to have to fire a full time patent lawyer to make sure ever diagnosis she makes doesn't violate some obsure diagnostic process that's some obscure pharma company or patent troll. Instead of opening knowledge these process patents build walled gardens around it.
If, as Promethius claims, their patented instructions only deal with how to determine to dosage so that the patient isn't accidentally overdosed then fine. But if the Mayo Clinic come up with an alternative they wish to share then don't drag 'em to court. You're still gonna sell your blasted drug so sit back and gather the money in. Who knows, a diagnostic regime backed by the Mayo Clinic would, more than likely, INCREASE sales.
We've seen similar instances happen in software where companies and associations stock patents up not because they need them but as much to defend themselves from patent trolls and the odd occasional legitimate patent complaint. The latter is so odd that it's as rare as hen's teeth. Most of them are overturned due to prior art or another reason after research is done by the readers of this site or Groklaw.
In sum, I'm forced to ask "just WHAT is being accomplished here"? In terms of this sort of thing and software patents I strongly suggest nothing that has to do with the original stated purpose of patents to begin with. That is to end trade secrets in order to expand knowledge. Instead, we are getting walled gardens.
Will the Supreme Court of the United States deal with the broader issues raised in this case? I don't know. Written briefs carry as much weight as oral ones do, in theory, and the Mayo Clinic's lawyers may have felt that it would he easier and more probable that they could overturn this patent by itself rather than the more difficult issue of diagnostic process patents in general and process patents in general.
It's sad when the patent process creates the very same issues it was designed to prevent.
If the question of ownership of the data must come up, what comes from MY pacemaker is my data, it came from me and from my body. I certainly give my GP and other physicians access rights to it but that's about as far as it goes. I certainly see no reason for the manufacturer to have access to the data beyond that needed to make sure it still functions.
I really hadn't thought about it much as I get the printout of the biannual checkup on it and a the same copy of the past 6 months of data my GP gets. In fact, I often end up giving it to her at my next appointment. I've also learned to read it and understand it. It does come in handy.
As far as it goes, though, every Province in Canada mandates the I must be able to see my records, the amount of time they can be retained and that they must be given to me on request.
I take the position that I own my body and any flaws, viri, and other things wandering around in or on me. I have no problem at all with data being used from stuff but heaven help you if you try to patent something you found in me without getting my permission first. That's largely an ethical stance on my part as I have zero use for pharmaceutical patents as, in my mind, they hinder innovation and discovery rather than promote either. And it's going to take a lot more than mere money to budge me off that. Dodges like changing a pill colour and applying that to the patent you hold to keep it from generic makers when the colour change has no value except to change the colour isn't my idea of research and development no matter what big pharma says.
So, examine me, use me and my tissues, fluids or whatever all you want for research and teaching purposes but once you want to use what you found in me in the formulation of any medication remember it's mine, not yours. I expect to be fully informed and to consent before you get there and even think about applying for something like a patent. Got it? :-)
It removes the possibility of the children in the school of obtaining critical thinking skills by example thereby leading to cults, political correctness and people who will continue on to law school after failing carpentry 101 in trade school advise schools to adopt even more zero tolerance rules no matter who ridiculous they are in practice.
Good thing too, cause that means that tradespeople still have brains and intelligence because the law school has absorbed all the Darwinian brain failures and turned them into lawyers.
Just imagine the uproar if they'd found them 30 minutes later playing doctor behind the school gym!
In the meantime sexual offenders go on doing it for years on college sports teams, junior hockey teams and other forms of activity that's supposed to teach fair play, athleticism, social skills and a host of other excuses schools use for wasting so much money on sports teams after axing PE programs.
Is it any wonder that by the time children reach adolescence they are convinced all adults are raving morons and, in their turn, when they have children become raving morons 30,000.2
Re: Re: Re: Re: Damage in the name of Entertainment
So I suppose the Spanish were protecting their intellectual property (gold stolen from the Incas, Mayans and Aztec) when Sir Francis Drake, operating as a privateer (pirate), opened up on them.
If it had been the third rail used in European electric railways either Adam or Jamie or both would have been vapourized. Lots more voltage and current in dem puppies. ;-)
The reality of the situation is that Mark Twain gave Grant a royalty of 75% on memoirs, close to an unheard of amount then and since. It did, as you indicate, pull his family out of debt. He had also had his military pension restored by then.
The fact that Twain offered the royalty and Grant accepted it indicates that it was Twain, not Grant that held the copyright. Not that it mattered all that much with Grant getting a royalty rate like that. Nealy half a million dollars in income in those days for the family left them, shall I say, comfortable. Copyright terms were shorter in those days, too.
The reality is that no one knows whether or not Grant would have written his memoirs in the absence of copyright, whether Twain would have offered as much for them or whether or not that was the only way for Grant to pull his family out of debt because (i) copyright existed, (ii) he and Twain made a deal that for Grant would earn guarantee a large return and (iii) his family lived in wealth and luxury afterwords so the statement is moot.
Such deals would have been offered before copyright by a publisher to an author and resulted in wealth for both even tough it would have taken more of Twain's legendary sales and persuasion skills to do it over the copies put out by "unauthorized" publishers but it likely would have happened pretty much the same way.
The reality is that we just don't know and never will.
Actually the U.S. didn't sign on to the Berne Convention on Copyright till sometime in the mid to late 1960s. Which accounts for the number of paperbacks around with a long statement about that by Tolkien of the LoTR trilogy and The Hobbit declaring the book by his American publisher legit and all the rest something less than orc poop. So yeah, the US did have a period where it could be termed parochial.
As for the consuming, by which you seem to indicate reading public, I'm not sure that there's much option left for authors. We have a generation coming along that knows knowing much but digital, Kindles, iPads and its ilk and preferring them over the printed page. I doubt, along with, say, Margaret Atwood, that the printed book will disappear. It will be in considerably less demand the way hardcovers were once paperbacks took off.
This may mean that there needs to be a realistic revision of copyright globally to account for this. For now it seems the first thing run to is the nuclear legislative response. At least something that doesn't falsely set up the discussion as readers taking food from writers mouths when the citizenry won't give the publishers what the publishers want which is how it is being framed now.
And the book tour has become a standard part of the publisher's and writer's MO when a new book is out which it wasn't in Dicken's days. But personal contact with the authour is still the scarcity and the book itself, no matter how published, is the commonplace item.
Re: Re: Re: Re: So how does one get famous in the first place?
And it certainly isn't that investors don't want to look at a total unknown with a script and a dream (nightmare?) who would like $100 million up front, thank you very much, with little else to back it up.
I know! We'll give him a title! "Nightmare on Techdirt!!"
Some app developers are quite lazy. Platforms like iPhone and Firefox have given them places to add the odd ad here and there and for them that's the best way to make money from an app. Certainly not make a good app. Heaven's no!
Those tend to be the apps and writers I've learned to avoid. By as much digital distance as I can.
Re: Re: Re: Some AC beat me to the obvious "pro-piracy" comment.
Good lord, you mean the authors who sign their work over to publishers just to get a book printed, songwriters who sign thier copyrights over to a myriad of entities, record company, licensing agencies and other assorted hangers on before they can record a note and various others who will move heaven and earth NOT to pay them and not allow them control even if they demand that politician A never, ever use their work in ad or at a rally again?
Control? What control. Earn a living even at the myth of "fractional" cost which might have applied in the 1600s but doesn't really now (actually it didn't then either).
As for worshiping at the altar of the law, it was once perfectly legal to burn a witch. Would you have insisted that law still exist?
You got one part right. Civil and common law ARE intended to allow us to do business and relate to each other in a civilized fashion. They're not designed as welfare plans for failing industries and they were NEVER designed for those failing industries to hide culture and content behind walled gardens.
One more time, when the citizenry removes consent for a law, the law must be changed or eliminated. Revolutions have happened over that, remember? Remember one that culminated in 1776? You don't seem to.
Except that doctors promise to do no harm when they take the Hippocractic Oath.
Anti-piracy people and groups tend to lean towards scorched earth -- do all the harm you can, as quickly as you can no matter what. Even if it won't solve anything.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: Re:
As for source documents, did you miss the point that there ARE none? At least other than what ICE has released thus far which are damning enough as it is.
And why would the site's lawyer lie about things when there's a lawsuit being considered? While, for the most part, courts ignore the rantings of lawyers to the media where constitutional cases are concerned they tend to pay more attention and in cases such as this a lot of attention as his comments and outline of events amount to evidence.
Actually, Mike's journalistic standards are pretty good all things considered. But he's not a journalist in the sense that he's writing up an "objective"* news story he's an editorialist and commentator which is different. So your complaints there are "without merit" to use a legal term for such things.
As for your closing sentence you ARE, in fact, accusing him of making this up in whole or part. In a very nice way that isn't actionable but you are accusing him of exactly what you say you aren't.
* (objective news) if you believe in that you believe in things like the tooth fairy and think that Nigerian Scam email you saw this morning is real.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sourcing
If the sites decide to follow this up with lawsuits of their own we'll find out more.
Maybe. Hard to find shredded papers and non-existent recordings. Just ask Richard Nixon.
On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Supreme Court Seems Ok With Patenting Medical Diagnostics
The idea was that by granting patents one would reduce the number of trade secrets and open up general knowledge in the field.
I don't know that any of that is arguable. It ought not to be.
Patent law has extended itself, like a cancer, to include process which isn't a physical manifestion of anything nor does it lead to a product in the physical world. All these patents do is lead to walling up knowledge and it's application which is the polar opposite of what patents are or, at least, were the intention of patents.
My problem with patenting any kind of diagnositc technique or process is that all diagnostics are, in some small form or other, different. What appears, on the surface, to be the same presenting problem, can often turn out to be something entirely different than what process and past experience says it ought to be. This applies to trouble shooting as much as it applies to a medical diagnosis though the outcomes in medicine are far more important, in the vast majority of cases, than me diagnosing and repairing a telecom transmission problem.
Should a patent interfere with the doctor taking her were she needs to go on what I present.then the patent system has failed. A GP ought not to have to fire a full time patent lawyer to make sure ever diagnosis she makes doesn't violate some obsure diagnostic process that's some obscure pharma company or patent troll. Instead of opening knowledge these process patents build walled gardens around it.
If, as Promethius claims, their patented instructions only deal with how to determine to dosage so that the patient isn't accidentally overdosed then fine. But if the Mayo Clinic come up with an alternative they wish to share then don't drag 'em to court. You're still gonna sell your blasted drug so sit back and gather the money in. Who knows, a diagnostic regime backed by the Mayo Clinic would, more than likely, INCREASE sales.
We've seen similar instances happen in software where companies and associations stock patents up not because they need them but as much to defend themselves from patent trolls and the odd occasional legitimate patent complaint. The latter is so odd that it's as rare as hen's teeth. Most of them are overturned due to prior art or another reason after research is done by the readers of this site or Groklaw.
In sum, I'm forced to ask "just WHAT is being accomplished here"? In terms of this sort of thing and software patents I strongly suggest nothing that has to do with the original stated purpose of patents to begin with. That is to end trade secrets in order to expand knowledge. Instead, we are getting walled gardens.
Will the Supreme Court of the United States deal with the broader issues raised in this case? I don't know. Written briefs carry as much weight as oral ones do, in theory, and the Mayo Clinic's lawyers may have felt that it would he easier and more probable that they could overturn this patent by itself rather than the more difficult issue of diagnostic process patents in general and process patents in general.
It's sad when the patent process creates the very same issues it was designed to prevent.
On the post: Who Owns The Data Collected About You From Devices Inside Your Body?
I really hadn't thought about it much as I get the printout of the biannual checkup on it and a the same copy of the past 6 months of data my GP gets. In fact, I often end up giving it to her at my next appointment. I've also learned to read it and understand it. It does come in handy.
As far as it goes, though, every Province in Canada mandates the I must be able to see my records, the amount of time they can be retained and that they must be given to me on request.
I take the position that I own my body and any flaws, viri, and other things wandering around in or on me. I have no problem at all with data being used from stuff but heaven help you if you try to patent something you found in me without getting my permission first. That's largely an ethical stance on my part as I have zero use for pharmaceutical patents as, in my mind, they hinder innovation and discovery rather than promote either. And it's going to take a lot more than mere money to budge me off that. Dodges like changing a pill colour and applying that to the patent you hold to keep it from generic makers when the colour change has no value except to change the colour isn't my idea of research and development no matter what big pharma says.
So, examine me, use me and my tissues, fluids or whatever all you want for research and teaching purposes but once you want to use what you found in me in the formulation of any medication remember it's mine, not yours. I expect to be fully informed and to consent before you get there and even think about applying for something like a patent. Got it? :-)
Thanks.
Yours truly
John
and do have a NICE day. ;-)
On the post: First Grader Investigated For Sexual Harassment For Kicking A Bully In His Private Parts
Re:
Good thing too, cause that means that tradespeople still have brains and intelligence because the law school has absorbed all the Darwinian brain failures and turned them into lawyers.
On the post: DailyDirt: Fixing Photos And Fooling Folks
Re: If Telling Lies With Still Photos Is “Photoshopping” ...
On the post: First Grader Investigated For Sexual Harassment For Kicking A Bully In His Private Parts
Re: Re:
In the meantime sexual offenders go on doing it for years on college sports teams, junior hockey teams and other forms of activity that's supposed to teach fair play, athleticism, social skills and a host of other excuses schools use for wasting so much money on sports teams after axing PE programs.
Is it any wonder that by the time children reach adolescence they are convinced all adults are raving morons and, in their turn, when they have children become raving morons 30,000.2
On the post: Mythbusters Crew Accidentally Fire Cannonball Through Suburban Neighborhood... Quickly Start Deleting Tweets Of The Evidence
Re: Re: Re: Re: Damage in the name of Entertainment
All while Liz, Mk 1 was bankrolling him.
On the post: Mythbusters Crew Accidentally Fire Cannonball Through Suburban Neighborhood... Quickly Start Deleting Tweets Of The Evidence
Re: Re: LoC
On the post: Mythbusters Crew Accidentally Fire Cannonball Through Suburban Neighborhood... Quickly Start Deleting Tweets Of The Evidence
Re: The myth they need to test
Sharks don't breach anywhere near as well as orca's do. ;-)
On the post: Mythbusters Crew Accidentally Fire Cannonball Through Suburban Neighborhood... Quickly Start Deleting Tweets Of The Evidence
Re: Re:
On the post: Mythbusters Crew Accidentally Fire Cannonball Through Suburban Neighborhood... Quickly Start Deleting Tweets Of The Evidence
Re: Re: Re: Mythbusters ballistics
On the post: Getting It: In A World Of Digital Abundance, Sell The Scarcities
Re: Ulysses S. Grant
The fact that Twain offered the royalty and Grant accepted it indicates that it was Twain, not Grant that held the copyright. Not that it mattered all that much with Grant getting a royalty rate like that. Nealy half a million dollars in income in those days for the family left them, shall I say, comfortable. Copyright terms were shorter in those days, too.
The reality is that no one knows whether or not Grant would have written his memoirs in the absence of copyright, whether Twain would have offered as much for them or whether or not that was the only way for Grant to pull his family out of debt because (i) copyright existed, (ii) he and Twain made a deal that for Grant would earn guarantee a large return and (iii) his family lived in wealth and luxury afterwords so the statement is moot.
Such deals would have been offered before copyright by a publisher to an author and resulted in wealth for both even tough it would have taken more of Twain's legendary sales and persuasion skills to do it over the copies put out by "unauthorized" publishers but it likely would have happened pretty much the same way.
The reality is that we just don't know and never will.
On the post: Getting It: In A World Of Digital Abundance, Sell The Scarcities
Re:
As for the consuming, by which you seem to indicate reading public, I'm not sure that there's much option left for authors. We have a generation coming along that knows knowing much but digital, Kindles, iPads and its ilk and preferring them over the printed page. I doubt, along with, say, Margaret Atwood, that the printed book will disappear. It will be in considerably less demand the way hardcovers were once paperbacks took off.
This may mean that there needs to be a realistic revision of copyright globally to account for this. For now it seems the first thing run to is the nuclear legislative response. At least something that doesn't falsely set up the discussion as readers taking food from writers mouths when the citizenry won't give the publishers what the publishers want which is how it is being framed now.
And the book tour has become a standard part of the publisher's and writer's MO when a new book is out which it wasn't in Dicken's days. But personal contact with the authour is still the scarcity and the book itself, no matter how published, is the commonplace item.
On the post: Getting It: In A World Of Digital Abundance, Sell The Scarcities
Re: Re: Re: Re: So how does one get famous in the first place?
I know! We'll give him a title! "Nightmare on Techdirt!!"
On the post: Attention! Monetizing Spotify Apps Is The Same As Monetizing Music
Those tend to be the apps and writers I've learned to avoid. By as much digital distance as I can.
On the post: Court Recognizes Daily Groupon Deal Hunters Aren't Likely To Be Confused By Groupion's Enterprise Software
This is one of them. ;-)
On the post: Belgian Anti-Piracy Group Threatens To Take ISPs To Court If They Don't Block The Pirate Bay; Pirate Bay Traffic From Belgium Increases
Re: Re: Re: Some AC beat me to the obvious "pro-piracy" comment.
Control? What control. Earn a living even at the myth of "fractional" cost which might have applied in the 1600s but doesn't really now (actually it didn't then either).
As for worshiping at the altar of the law, it was once perfectly legal to burn a witch. Would you have insisted that law still exist?
You got one part right. Civil and common law ARE intended to allow us to do business and relate to each other in a civilized fashion. They're not designed as welfare plans for failing industries and they were NEVER designed for those failing industries to hide culture and content behind walled gardens.
One more time, when the citizenry removes consent for a law, the law must be changed or eliminated. Revolutions have happened over that, remember? Remember one that culminated in 1776? You don't seem to.
On the post: Belgian Anti-Piracy Group Threatens To Take ISPs To Court If They Don't Block The Pirate Bay; Pirate Bay Traffic From Belgium Increases
Re: Re:
Anti-piracy people and groups tend to lean towards scorched earth -- do all the harm you can, as quickly as you can no matter what. Even if it won't solve anything.
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