Microsoft keeps whining about how often they get sued and they whine even more over the fact that they are losing cases based on their conduct.
That is why they demanded Patent Deform five years ago and helped form the Piracy Coalition.
It is interesting how many members of the Piracy Coalition are associated with TechDIRT.
Inventors innovate while Piracy Coalition members claim that they innovate. The only area they innovate in is propaganda and the types of vehicles they use to propagate their propaganda. Now the question is TechDIRT one of those vehicles?
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Big business buys academics all the time. The academic then promotes their sponsor's agenda. What makes you think that the H-1B issue is any different?
There is a reason that Apple keeps getting sued. Maybe they should start acquiring rights before use.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
History does repeat. Edison was defamed in his time just like contemporary inventors are today. As long as pirates could get away with theft they were content to do so quietly. Today they face more sophisticated inventors and are being held accountable at least some of the time.
That is why they are conducting a massive smear campaign against the inventor community and that is why they encourage academics, bloggers, and media. They are stealing billions every year so the few hundred million they are spending to by people to speak on their behalf is really chump change.
I wound how many of the people posting on TechDIRT are paid stooges?
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"When I was a young man the patent system did not serve inventors' well in that big companies owned the courts and were able to steal with impunity."
>
You have identified your problem. You do not produce inventions and therefore do not understand what those of us who do are dealing with.
Products can be designed in ways that reverse engineering is very difficult. This is the tactic I used for many years before I switched to using the patent system.
Teaming up with investors is fraught with peril which is why I have always grown my business with retained earnings.
"We will not produce inventions if we cannot make a living doing so."
>
I am not interested in using other ways of profiting since all of them allow a significant part of profit which should go to the inventors to be pirated. This problem became even more pronounced with the advent of very large transnational corporations.
The problem with your opinions is that they are based on a simplistic view of the nature of the inventing business which is why I characterized you and many other TechDIRT users as Dim-wads. The level of ignorance on this forum is staggering.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"There's no need to buy anyone out, you just keep innovating and leapfrogging the other players, and the products keep getting better and better," displays a profound ignorance of what really happened without patents.
Inventors and the guilds they were part of kept inventions secret as long as possible. As a result progress was very slow.
Inventors will invest much more time and effort into protecting their invention if there is no patent system in place. When I was a young man the patent system did not serve inventors' well in that big companies owned the courts and were able to steal with impunity.
I did not file patents then. I built my circuits and potted them, including a means to ensure that they could not be reverse engineered. It worked well and I would have continued to do this if not for patents becoming enforceable.
Every professional tends to view their contribution as the most important. Big companies strength is capital and marketing, so they argue that they are the most important link. It is a fact that they would not have a better widget to market without the people who invented it.
We will not produce inventions if we cannot make a living doing so.
Edison was the first to make a viable bulb. That is why he dominated the market. The example cited shows how the system worked as intended. What Mike hates is his inability to produce a meaningful invention. It must be rather hard on the ego to always be in a lowly support role and having to kiss so much tail to eek out a living.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Many teachers are drones, burned out and just marking time until they retire. But some are really good teachers who love to learn and love to see others learn. Those are the ones creating exceptional lesson plans.
School administrators are often washed up jocks who just didn't make the grade. Many go into teaching so that they can continue to relive their glory days being big fish in little ponds. They often are the dredges of the teaching profession and become classic examples of the "Peter Principle" in that they go into administration.
They use their position to lavish fund sports while leaving teachers without need supplies. Many of those teachers buy supplies which should have been supplied personally.
Their lesson plans are their property and if they can sell them and recoup some of the money their have spent over the years on supplies or the value of the time they have spent doing things above and beyond their duty why shouldn't they do so?
The problem with many TechDIRT members is that they do not understand property rights, ethics, or morality. It seems that TechDIRT has far too many members do not recognize that it is OK to use what is conferred to public domain by the owner but not OK to use that which is not.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"if anyone makes money, others come grabbing as well."
The law is pretty clear that the teacher's lesson plan is their property and it should stay that way. The people doing the grabbing are just like those who want to grab inventors property rights and TechDIRT seems to be run by and heavily populated by entitlement minded asset thieves who suffer from the "Little Person Syndrome":)
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Narrow Patent-Common With Piracy Coalition Members
Apple, like other members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness which is better known as the Piracy Coalition tends to file for patents on lots of very narrow incremental inventions. They do this because they are not capable of producing major inventions. It is quantity over quality and a common trait of large companies.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"To continue the analogy - you have hung around in the dark with your knife and stabbed yourself in the foot by mistake!"
No Richard, I stabbed arrogant patent pirates in the foot and elsewhere in more ways than you can imagine.
It is a shame that I was forced to spend my time doing this rather than inventing and creating jobs and prosperity.
That is the real issue, jobs and prosperity which disappear or are never created when a big company gets away with stealing an invention and producing it in some low wage country.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
If I am mean it is a result of being stomped on by patent pirates. Most people buckle and fail but some of us manage to survive. We have been hardened by our experiences and we do not put up with crap from anyone.
All inventors stand on the shoulders of those who proceeded them. In my case I only pursued about half a percent of the inventions I produced. I did a patent search for the best ones. Studying prior art allowed me to to identify nuances of the invention which were not immediately obvious and to stack out the patentable scope of the invention.
Before patents guilds used to keep inventions secret and the arts advanced very slowly. People only disclose their inventions because they get a period of exclusive use.
Those who file a patent teach the invention. Those who are late to teaching get nothing and that creates a strong incentive to teach as soon as possible. Those who are late then have the option to leapfrog the earlier art with an invention of their own. If they can they end up on top and if they can't they can practice the invention by compensating the party who taught.
The system works very well as evidenced by how patent pirating crooked transnational companies whine.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Changing the dynamics of the fight.
"There is no need for both and you know it. Software is written and therefore is covered under copyright."
Actually if we were going to throw out copyright or patents in the software arena then I would say copyright should go.
Using your argument we could say that no one should be able to enforce trademarks and patents or trademarks and copyright.
From an economic point of view allowing foreign competitors to run with our inventions would be really bad news.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
And you think your opinion matters for what reason?
Reread what I have written about the adversity which inventors face. Those of us who survive the worst which patent pirates can do are not prone to care what people like you think. What is a shame is that some people focus on resenting what others accomplish rather then putting their efforts into doing something worthwhile. I invented a name for this affliction "The Little Person Syndrome". This is different than dwarfism, in that it refers to an affliction of the mind.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
"The Rest of the World says: "Dear Ronald,You are an ass"
I and other inventors are a product of our environment. For every inventor there are scores of disreputable asset thieves. They make us what we are.
On one hand we have big transnational companies stealing billions of dollars from inventors. They are the equilivent of organized crime.
On the other we have a bunch of petty criminals, pickpockets and what not who want to steal much smaller amounts.
I get the impression that TechDIRT has a high percentage of the latter group and I suspect that it is the former group who plays a big role in all this.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"Why should software be given both copyright and patent privileges?"
Copyright only protects the nearly the exact expression and is very limited. A patent protects the essence of the invention. They are very different.
Early on people used copyright for software because that was the only tool they had to use. It never protected what had been invented.
As computing power increased so did the scope of what can be done in software. In fact, many chips underlying hardware is programmable to allow them to be tailored in micro code to specific uses. For many years the microcode was permanent once it was burned into the chip. Today it is often reprogrammable to allow updates.
My point is that inventions can be often be expressed as either hardware or software. The trend to expressing invention is software is only going to accelerate. Excluding patent protection for software will only serve to allow our international competitors to take advantage of American ingenuity without compensating us. It will result in an ever accelerating loss of jobs and a precipitous drop in our competitiveness.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Re: Re: Re: Understanding a business before commenting.
Because I could not afford to get justice through the legal system I developed a host of guerrilla warfare tactics to defend my IP rights.
So when companies thought they were going to quietly due me in because they thought I was an easy mark the reality was that I was waiting in that dark room with a very sharp knife :)
I then went on to quietly work behind the scenes to cultivate availability of contingency litigators and inventors.
Those efforts received a considerable boost in recent years when legislation was passed which drove some very talented litigators into patent enforcement.
This has made our gun nearly as effective as what big companies have. And today they are being held accountable. That is why just like school yard bullies break down and cry when they eventually pick the wrong fight that big companies are whining about mythical trolls today.
As the costs of their disreputable conduct escalate they will eventually figure out that they need to stop stealing.
At that point they will start acquiring rights before taking and we can all live happily ever after.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"The real smart move in these circumstances is to get rid of the gun - why am I not surprised that you aren't clever enough to realize that?"
In my case I changed the nature of the fight to one which I could win in some measure.
In the short term I could not get justice because patent enforcement entities where not available. So I was forced to settle for a small part of the value of my invention which was worth about $40 million.
I used what I was able to extract to fund advocacy work and went on to devote the bulk of my time over the last twenty years to developing a multitude of tactics to adjust patent thieves attitudes.
There is a joke in the inventor community about how organizing inventors is like herding cats. Yet as far as I can tell I am the first person to successfully organize inventors. While I started this process it was only through the efforts of many other volunteers that I was able to bring it to this point.
Forty years ago companies were able to steal with total impunity. Today they are not and we will keep up the pressure until these crooks learn that there is a better way.
Killing patents will only serve to allow low cost labor competitors to take the fruits of American ingenuity. It would kill wealth creation in America because all our inventions would only serve to increase others profit rather than our own.
America cannot sustain our standard of living reselling low profit commodity products and service from low wage countries. It is only through higher profit margins sustained by patent protection that we can maintain our higher standard of living.
Low level software hacks cannot compete with programmers in low wage countries and they will be replaced without patent protections.
The bottom line is that while low level programmers may resent the fact that there are inventors in their mist their fate is dependent on protecting the inventors and their inventions for the benefit of our people.
Richard and Ben both serve as good examples of the kind of short term gain oriented mentality which has placed America in the edge of an economic cliff. Killing patents would only serve to push us over the cliff.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
Richard says: "Breathtaking arrogance Mr Riley." and "At one point in my career I was asked which of the many ideas that I had come up with during our latest development I thought we should patent. I am happy to say that I replied "None of them - it's a waste of our time and so long as we keep developing the copiers will never catch up."
If there were significant inventions Richard handed out some incredibly bad advice based on ignorance of how the patent system works. On the other hand it is probable that they did not really have a significant invention and never will have and that explains his hostility to a system with rewards real inventors at the expense of those who are incapable of producing inventions.
The whole point of the patent system is to get inventors to fully disclose the invention and to create an incentive for others to leapfrog the invention by subjecting them to a toll if they are unable to do so. It works very well and those who cannot invent get to supply the incentive with dollars to those who can invent.
The moral of this is that if Richard was capable of inventing he would do so rather than whining about those who are inventing.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
"I have been a professional programmer for 30+ years (and an amateur for a few more than that) and I have _never_ understood the justification for software patents."
Ben, there are programmers and then there are programmers who actually invent new things. Most programmers are on the wrong side of the Bell Curve, they have never had an original thought and that is why they cannot understand why there should be software patents.
I started programming in the mid sixties, first in Algol, then in Fortran and I went on to develop both analog and digital hardware and to write software in low and high level languages. This include over a score of languages and over my career at least a hundred dialects.
The reason you and other software people who came later cannot understand this is that you lack hardware background and lack the creative spark.
It is not surprising that lower level programmers resent the fact that others are more competent. Your mentality is much like low level criminals who rationalize it is ok to steal cars and part them out or it is ok to pick pockets.
I have yet to see a criminal who doses not think that those who bring them to justice is wrong. We still toss them in jail and perhaps we need to criminalize patent theft to help those who lack an innate ability to understand the difference between right and wrong and who lack empathy for those who are victims of asset thieves to understand their flawed reasoning processes.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
This post is a good example of your spewing nonsense because you keep commenting on patent issues with minimal understanding of patents and the players.
Microsoft built its market position on others inventions. Microsoft has never been especially inventive. Microsoft only started filing patents after they were handed their head a few times.
There are two basic paths which companies take. One path is companies who are true inventors. They start with a few important patents and build from there. The other path is the one Microsoft, Micron, Dell and others take, where they ride the coattails of real inventors. For every company based on true innovation (not the way big companies use the word) there are generally scores of asset thieves trying to make an easy and quick buck.
As both types of companies age they usually become alike. This is ironic and counter intuitive but it is true. The companies who started as true inventors gradually lose their ability to produce significant inventions but generally retain an entitlement minded arrogance and become predators on subsequent generations of inventors. They try to compensate for their inability to produce significant inventions by filing large qualities of increment improvement patents. IBM's massive patent filings are another example of this.
Meanwhile, the companies who started as parasites generally figure out that filing hordes of minor incremental patents serves as a good defensive tool when they get into a squabble with other large entities, and this is what Microsoft has been doing in recent years. There is a reason that Microsoft is repeatedly sued and that they keep losing or settling those cases.
Like people, companies go through a life cycle. Young ones, both those based on invention and the others take great risks chasing big rewards. Those who succeed become more conservative as they age, risk adverse and when they are king of the hill become very arrogant. They take liberties with others intellectual property counting on their ability to bankrupt junior parties through abuse of the process of law. For the most part that abuse takes the form of them using delaying tactics.
The reason that inventors like rocket docket venues such as Eastern Texas which do not allow procedural delays is that they need a fast resolution to their cases in order to survive.
It is common for inventors to license or sell their first inventions in order to build capital. Later, inventors generally use that capital to produce more inventions and to build companies or to partner with others who are better suited to build companies. The problem is that a majority of those companies along with the jobs and prosperity they would have produced are never getting a chance to flower because patent piracy by the biggest companies causes them to be still born. So on one hand those large companies are shipping jobs and even worse our nation's collective intellectual capital out of the country and at the same time destroying new job creation. This is not a sustainable business model.
When big companies misappropriate their inventions inventors must partner with patent enforcement entities. The cost of patent litigation starts at about two million and can easily run into tens of millions. There are very few inventors or small companies who can bear this cost alone. Even when they find a patent enforcement partner their path to success is delayed at least five years in a rocket docket venue and in other venues patent pirating companies can delay justice for decades.
There is a huge difference between the nature of any member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness (Piracy Coalition) like Microsoft and a small company based in a few inventions. One difference is the scope and value of inventions. Small entity patents tend to be broader.
Because of the high costs of patent litigation big companies are generally able to steal up to ten million with complete impunity, between ten and a hundred million it is questionable rather an inventor can get justice. It is only over a hundred million that there is reasonable certainty of investors defending a patent. This is why you will rarely see cases with judgments less than a hundred million dollars.
It is important that people understand that there would not be patent enforcement entities if not for the fact that large companies are creating huge liabilities by intentionally rolling the dice infringing others patents. What they like to call trolls are simply property holders defending their rights against those who steal on a very grand scale. Patent pirating companies can end their litigation problems by acquiring rights to an invention before using it.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Can The US Continue To Innovate At A Necessary Rate Without Causing Complete Social Upheaval?
Microsoft's Sticky Fingers
That is why they demanded Patent Deform five years ago and helped form the Piracy Coalition.
It is interesting how many members of the Piracy Coalition are associated with TechDIRT.
Inventors innovate while Piracy Coalition members claim that they innovate. The only area they innovate in is propaganda and the types of vehicles they use to propagate their propaganda. Now the question is TechDIRT one of those vehicles?
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Court Overreacts And Orders Full Takedown Of Anti-H-1B Websites Over Contradictory Libel/Copyright Claims
Re: Re: H-1B not needed
Big business buys academics all the time. The academic then promotes their sponsor's agenda. What makes you think that the H-1B issue is any different?
On the post: Nokia Launches Another Patent Attack On Apple, Uses ITC Loophole To Get Second Shot At Hurting Apple
Is Apple A Serial Infringer?
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: How Thomas Edison, Patron Saint Of Patent Holders, Copied Others' Works To 'Invent' The Light Bulb
Edison Hated By Patent Pirates
That is why they are conducting a massive smear campaign against the inventor community and that is why they encourage academics, bloggers, and media. They are stealing billions every year so the few hundred million they are spending to by people to speak on their behalf is really chump change.
I wound how many of the people posting on TechDIRT are paid stooges?
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: How Thomas Edison, Patron Saint Of Patent Holders, Copied Others' Works To 'Invent' The Light Bulb
Re: Re: TechDIRT Dim-wads
>
You have identified your problem. You do not produce inventions and therefore do not understand what those of us who do are dealing with.
Products can be designed in ways that reverse engineering is very difficult. This is the tactic I used for many years before I switched to using the patent system.
Teaming up with investors is fraught with peril which is why I have always grown my business with retained earnings.
"We will not produce inventions if we cannot make a living doing so."
>
I am not interested in using other ways of profiting since all of them allow a significant part of profit which should go to the inventors to be pirated. This problem became even more pronounced with the advent of very large transnational corporations.
The problem with your opinions is that they are based on a simplistic view of the nature of the inventing business which is why I characterized you and many other TechDIRT users as Dim-wads. The level of ignorance on this forum is staggering.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: How Thomas Edison, Patron Saint Of Patent Holders, Copied Others' Works To 'Invent' The Light Bulb
TechDIRT Dim-wads
Inventors and the guilds they were part of kept inventions secret as long as possible. As a result progress was very slow.
Inventors will invest much more time and effort into protecting their invention if there is no patent system in place. When I was a young man the patent system did not serve inventors' well in that big companies owned the courts and were able to steal with impunity.
I did not file patents then. I built my circuits and potted them, including a means to ensure that they could not be reverse engineered. It worked well and I would have continued to do this if not for patents becoming enforceable.
Every professional tends to view their contribution as the most important. Big companies strength is capital and marketing, so they argue that they are the most important link. It is a fact that they would not have a better widget to market without the people who invented it.
We will not produce inventions if we cannot make a living doing so.
Edison was the first to make a viable bulb. That is why he dominated the market. The example cited shows how the system worked as intended. What Mike hates is his inability to produce a meaningful invention. It must be rather hard on the ego to always be in a lowly support role and having to kiss so much tail to eek out a living.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Another Battle: Can Teachers Sell Lesson Plans?
Exceptional Teachers
School administrators are often washed up jocks who just didn't make the grade. Many go into teaching so that they can continue to relive their glory days being big fish in little ponds. They often are the dredges of the teaching profession and become classic examples of the "Peter Principle" in that they go into administration.
They use their position to lavish fund sports while leaving teachers without need supplies. Many of those teachers buy supplies which should have been supplied personally.
Their lesson plans are their property and if they can sell them and recoup some of the money their have spent over the years on supplies or the value of the time they have spent doing things above and beyond their duty why shouldn't they do so?
The problem with many TechDIRT members is that they do not understand property rights, ethics, or morality. It seems that TechDIRT has far too many members do not recognize that it is OK to use what is conferred to public domain by the owner but not OK to use that which is not.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Another Battle: Can Teachers Sell Lesson Plans?
Asset Thieves
The law is pretty clear that the teacher's lesson plan is their property and it should stay that way. The people doing the grabbing are just like those who want to grab inventors property rights and TechDIRT seems to be run by and heavily populated by entitlement minded asset thieves who suffer from the "Little Person Syndrome":)
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Apple Trying To Patent Anti-Tamper Tape
Narrow Patent-Common With Piracy Coalition Members
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Changing the dynamics of the fight.
No Richard, I stabbed arrogant patent pirates in the foot and elsewhere in more ways than you can imagine.
It is a shame that I was forced to spend my time doing this rather than inventing and creating jobs and prosperity.
That is the real issue, jobs and prosperity which disappear or are never created when a big company gets away with stealing an invention and producing it in some low wage country.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
All inventors stand on the shoulders of those who proceeded them. In my case I only pursued about half a percent of the inventions I produced. I did a patent search for the best ones. Studying prior art allowed me to to identify nuances of the invention which were not immediately obvious and to stack out the patentable scope of the invention.
Before patents guilds used to keep inventions secret and the arts advanced very slowly. People only disclose their inventions because they get a period of exclusive use.
Those who file a patent teach the invention. Those who are late to teaching get nothing and that creates a strong incentive to teach as soon as possible. Those who are late then have the option to leapfrog the earlier art with an invention of their own. If they can they end up on top and if they can't they can practice the invention by compensating the party who taught.
The system works very well as evidenced by how patent pirating crooked transnational companies whine.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Changing the dynamics of the fight.
Actually if we were going to throw out copyright or patents in the software arena then I would say copyright should go.
Using your argument we could say that no one should be able to enforce trademarks and patents or trademarks and copyright.
From an economic point of view allowing foreign competitors to run with our inventions would be really bad news.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
Reread what I have written about the adversity which inventors face. Those of us who survive the worst which patent pirates can do are not prone to care what people like you think. What is a shame is that some people focus on resenting what others accomplish rather then putting their efforts into doing something worthwhile. I invented a name for this affliction "The Little Person Syndrome". This is different than dwarfism, in that it refers to an affliction of the mind.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
I and other inventors are a product of our environment. For every inventor there are scores of disreputable asset thieves. They make us what we are.
On one hand we have big transnational companies stealing billions of dollars from inventors. They are the equilivent of organized crime.
On the other we have a bunch of petty criminals, pickpockets and what not who want to steal much smaller amounts.
I get the impression that TechDIRT has a high percentage of the latter group and I suspect that it is the former group who plays a big role in all this.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Changing the dynamics of the fight.
Copyright only protects the nearly the exact expression and is very limited. A patent protects the essence of the invention. They are very different.
Early on people used copyright for software because that was the only tool they had to use. It never protected what had been invented.
As computing power increased so did the scope of what can be done in software. In fact, many chips underlying hardware is programmable to allow them to be tailored in micro code to specific uses. For many years the microcode was permanent once it was burned into the chip. Today it is often reprogrammable to allow updates.
My point is that inventions can be often be expressed as either hardware or software. The trend to expressing invention is software is only going to accelerate. Excluding patent protection for software will only serve to allow our international competitors to take advantage of American ingenuity without compensating us. It will result in an ever accelerating loss of jobs and a precipitous drop in our competitiveness.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Understanding a business before commenting.
So when companies thought they were going to quietly due me in because they thought I was an easy mark the reality was that I was waiting in that dark room with a very sharp knife :)
I then went on to quietly work behind the scenes to cultivate availability of contingency litigators and inventors.
Those efforts received a considerable boost in recent years when legislation was passed which drove some very talented litigators into patent enforcement.
This has made our gun nearly as effective as what big companies have. And today they are being held accountable. That is why just like school yard bullies break down and cry when they eventually pick the wrong fight that big companies are whining about mythical trolls today.
As the costs of their disreputable conduct escalate they will eventually figure out that they need to stop stealing.
At that point they will start acquiring rights before taking and we can all live happily ever after.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Changing the dynamics of the fight.
In my case I changed the nature of the fight to one which I could win in some measure.
In the short term I could not get justice because patent enforcement entities where not available. So I was forced to settle for a small part of the value of my invention which was worth about $40 million.
I used what I was able to extract to fund advocacy work and went on to devote the bulk of my time over the last twenty years to developing a multitude of tactics to adjust patent thieves attitudes.
There is a joke in the inventor community about how organizing inventors is like herding cats. Yet as far as I can tell I am the first person to successfully organize inventors. While I started this process it was only through the efforts of many other volunteers that I was able to bring it to this point.
Forty years ago companies were able to steal with total impunity. Today they are not and we will keep up the pressure until these crooks learn that there is a better way.
Killing patents will only serve to allow low cost labor competitors to take the fruits of American ingenuity. It would kill wealth creation in America because all our inventions would only serve to increase others profit rather than our own.
America cannot sustain our standard of living reselling low profit commodity products and service from low wage countries. It is only through higher profit margins sustained by patent protection that we can maintain our higher standard of living.
Low level software hacks cannot compete with programmers in low wage countries and they will be replaced without patent protections.
The bottom line is that while low level programmers may resent the fact that there are inventors in their mist their fate is dependent on protecting the inventors and their inventions for the benefit of our people.
Richard and Ben both serve as good examples of the kind of short term gain oriented mentality which has placed America in the edge of an economic cliff. Killing patents would only serve to push us over the cliff.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Re: Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
If there were significant inventions Richard handed out some incredibly bad advice based on ignorance of how the patent system works. On the other hand it is probable that they did not really have a significant invention and never will have and that explains his hostility to a system with rewards real inventors at the expense of those who are incapable of producing inventions.
The whole point of the patent system is to get inventors to fully disclose the invention and to create an incentive for others to leapfrog the invention by subjecting them to a toll if they are unable to do so. It works very well and those who cannot invent get to supply the incentive with dollars to those who can invent.
The moral of this is that if Richard was capable of inventing he would do so rather than whining about those who are inventing.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Re: Live by the patent doesn't matter
Ben, there are programmers and then there are programmers who actually invent new things. Most programmers are on the wrong side of the Bell Curve, they have never had an original thought and that is why they cannot understand why there should be software patents.
I started programming in the mid sixties, first in Algol, then in Fortran and I went on to develop both analog and digital hardware and to write software in low and high level languages. This include over a score of languages and over my career at least a hundred dialects.
The reason you and other software people who came later cannot understand this is that you lack hardware background and lack the creative spark.
It is not surprising that lower level programmers resent the fact that others are more competent. Your mentality is much like low level criminals who rationalize it is ok to steal cars and part them out or it is ok to pick pockets.
I have yet to see a criminal who doses not think that those who bring them to justice is wrong. We still toss them in jail and perhaps we need to criminalize patent theft to help those who lack an innate ability to understand the difference between right and wrong and who lack empathy for those who are victims of asset thieves to understand their flawed reasoning processes.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
On the post: Live By The Patent, Get Sued By The Patent
Understanding a business before commenting.
This post is a good example of your spewing nonsense because you keep commenting on patent issues with minimal understanding of patents and the players.
Microsoft built its market position on others inventions. Microsoft has never been especially inventive. Microsoft only started filing patents after they were handed their head a few times.
There are two basic paths which companies take. One path is companies who are true inventors. They start with a few important patents and build from there. The other path is the one Microsoft, Micron, Dell and others take, where they ride the coattails of real inventors. For every company based on true innovation (not the way big companies use the word) there are generally scores of asset thieves trying to make an easy and quick buck.
As both types of companies age they usually become alike. This is ironic and counter intuitive but it is true. The companies who started as true inventors gradually lose their ability to produce significant inventions but generally retain an entitlement minded arrogance and become predators on subsequent generations of inventors. They try to compensate for their inability to produce significant inventions by filing large qualities of increment improvement patents. IBM's massive patent filings are another example of this.
Meanwhile, the companies who started as parasites generally figure out that filing hordes of minor incremental patents serves as a good defensive tool when they get into a squabble with other large entities, and this is what Microsoft has been doing in recent years. There is a reason that Microsoft is repeatedly sued and that they keep losing or settling those cases.
Like people, companies go through a life cycle. Young ones, both those based on invention and the others take great risks chasing big rewards. Those who succeed become more conservative as they age, risk adverse and when they are king of the hill become very arrogant. They take liberties with others intellectual property counting on their ability to bankrupt junior parties through abuse of the process of law. For the most part that abuse takes the form of them using delaying tactics.
The reason that inventors like rocket docket venues such as Eastern Texas which do not allow procedural delays is that they need a fast resolution to their cases in order to survive.
It is common for inventors to license or sell their first inventions in order to build capital. Later, inventors generally use that capital to produce more inventions and to build companies or to partner with others who are better suited to build companies. The problem is that a majority of those companies along with the jobs and prosperity they would have produced are never getting a chance to flower because patent piracy by the biggest companies causes them to be still born. So on one hand those large companies are shipping jobs and even worse our nation's collective intellectual capital out of the country and at the same time destroying new job creation. This is not a sustainable business model.
When big companies misappropriate their inventions inventors must partner with patent enforcement entities. The cost of patent litigation starts at about two million and can easily run into tens of millions. There are very few inventors or small companies who can bear this cost alone. Even when they find a patent enforcement partner their path to success is delayed at least five years in a rocket docket venue and in other venues patent pirating companies can delay justice for decades.
There is a huge difference between the nature of any member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness (Piracy Coalition) like Microsoft and a small company based in a few inventions. One difference is the scope and value of inventions. Small entity patents tend to be broader.
Because of the high costs of patent litigation big companies are generally able to steal up to ten million with complete impunity, between ten and a hundred million it is questionable rather an inventor can get justice. It is only over a hundred million that there is reasonable certainty of investors defending a patent. This is why you will rarely see cases with judgments less than a hundred million dollars.
It is important that people understand that there would not be patent enforcement entities if not for the fact that large companies are creating huge liabilities by intentionally rolling the dice infringing others patents. What they like to call trolls are simply property holders defending their rights against those who steal on a very grand scale. Patent pirating companies can end their litigation problems by acquiring rights to an invention before using it.
Ronald J. Riley,
I am speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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