HackPatents

TableOfContents

Back to home page: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Sasecurity

Patents
This page url: http://bit.ly/7JkmM Patents are stifling innovation. Heller's main thesis is that too much ownership can work to 'gridlock' economic progress, investment and innovation. This is explored in how granting too large a bundle of rights for patents has hobbled many high-technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical development efforts, threatening U.S. prosperity and consumer well-being. Also, a fine chapter on how U.S. radio spectrum, subject for decades to FCC over-specification of permissible uses and politically-constrained allocation practices, is presently a mostly-wasted public resource. The chapter on Russia's efforts to adopt property rights in the retail and apartment markets alone is worth the price.
 * http://www.gridlockeconomy.com/

* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies_on_economics_and_innovation and http://en.swpat.org/wiki/South_Africa * http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2009/Raymondhacking.mp3 * http://www.ftisa.org.za/ * http://www.thepublicdomain.org/ * http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html Pro software patents * http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2008/07/07/intellectual-property-regime-stifles-science-and-innovation-nobel-laureates-say/ * http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/02/how-patent-trolls-are-a-tax-on-innovation.html * http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-legislativestaffers.html * http://www.patentassassins.com * http://truereform.piausa.org/ * http://www.gridlockeconomy.com/buy.html The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (Hardcover) * http://www.publicknowledge.org Opposes copyright * RobertSteele Adds additional insights and points out some weaknesses in Lessig's book * http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000000718 * http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail349.html * http://www.digitalmajority.org/swpatnews * http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090717043855128 * http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5364/698 * http://opencopy.org/articles/disney-as-mass-deception/ * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patents * http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articlesmt/writing.shtml * http://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/copybot-roils-secondlife-economy * http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/03/10/239249 * http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/549822/?sc=dwhn * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/02/software-new-engine-must-be-patentable/id=4371/ * GuardrailsInternet http://slated.org/the_right_to_own_knowledge

http://boycottnovell.com/2009/08/21/robbery-in-the-uspto-and-more/

Justice Bradley 1882 on patents
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/09/08/1731257 "It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith." (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 1017 U.S. 192, 200 (1882)).

You can't own an idea
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/07/patents-dont-promote-innovation-study.html "...If I write a book, or a song, I do not own these for the simple reason that they are built on the creations of my predecessors: there is no art created in a vacuum. Even if it reacts *against* something, that something was needed for the reaction, and so what I create is not purely due to me...." [Labor theory of property @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_property ] >> When a person works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person.

Problem is that many work towards inventions, yet patent law gives it all to a single entity. For example, patent law takes away from the labor I did to create item X that ended up inspiring a conversation between you and someone, from which you got inspiration towards your invention. I contributed because without my item X, you would not have made that invention as/when you did.

Not all rights are property rights
You can't own an idea. Violating someone's copyright is no more "theft" than violating their right-of-way is. Not all rights are property rights. Legal firms would obviously not want the patent/copyright extortion racket to cease functioning. There is no such concept as "intellectual property" anywhere in the Bible. If something really belongs to you then how can a government official decide it only remains yours for 20 years? Lets take the first person who invented the wheel, it was his idea. Lets say it cost him three paw-paws and one tiger skin to perfect. He and five tribal wizards form a government and decree that henceforth he and his offspring must be paid for eternity royalties. So lets say half the planet are not his offspring, this half then has to pay the other half? Like copyright law, patent law was never meant to prevent the duplication of a product, process, or idea. http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/07/05/0714203 It was only meant to prevent the duplication FOR PROFIT. I personally met one individual who patented a method to modify carburetors to increase fuel mileage. He sold his patent to GM. The man still worked on cars, and modified those big Chevy Impalas to get 30+ MPG. If he worked on your car, he could not accept payment. Doing so would have put him in violation of patent law. But, doing the very same work for his own amusement was perfectly legal.

Thomas Jefferson on patents
http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/41 If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possess the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.10

Patents aren't "physical" they are "spiritual"
From http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20071101145010612 we have this interpretation ".... software patents are even more foolish than physical world patents......" thus makes a logically erroneous distinction between "physical" and "spiritual"(software)  as per this logic "....Patent law in most countries says that algorithms aren't patentable. This rule is left over from a time when "algorithm" meant something like the Sieve of Eratosthenes. In 1800, people could not see as readily as we can that a great many patents on mechanical objects were really patents on the algorithms they embodied....." from http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html. Which makes sense, when you patent a mechanical contraption, you are actually patenting an idea of it. In the same way you can't patent the world of software ideas. If one can't "steal" a software idea such as one-click from Amazon then by the same logic you can't steal an idea of how to make an electric car.

From [url]http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/9693.html[/url] [url]http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html[/url] "..... Are software patents a bad thing? According to Paul Graham, if you are opposed to software patents, you logically are opposed to patents in general. ...."

Which has been the point of many articulate authors as per [url]http://bit.ly/7JkmM[/url]. A Linux geek will hack a software patent but somehow feels it is immoral to hack Lipitor cholesterol drugs and giving these drugs away for free or at cost price. Both Lipitor drugs, Solar energy generation and Amazon's one-click patent is the implementation of an idea. It exists as an abstract concept in somebodies mind. The opensource Linux freesoftware movement isn't being logically consistent in their view that software(which is just an idea) shouldn't be patentable but making Lipitor (which is an idea) should be patentable. You can't have this both ways: Spoor & Fisher is correct in their view. If hacking the Lipitor patent is immoral then so is hacking the One-click Amazon idea immoral.

Now what is morality? That depends on your religious belief system. If you believe in the Bible then where does the Bible say copying somebodies idea is theft. If you know that God doesn't view copying the formula for lipitor as theft and yet you as a sheister lawyer are using the Bible to convince Xtians that they are immoral in saving a person's life who can't afford Lipitor then you are a liar.

Theft in the Bible is only defined as taking physical property and deceiving other people as to what the Bible says so as to make money out of them is at the level of a false prophet. You can't own an idea. Violating someone's copyright is no more "theft" than violating their right-of-way is. Not all rights are property rights. As Richard Stalman said: "Pirates physically attack ships, giving away an idea for free isn't attacking anybody." The media empires says we can't "pirate" their Discovery DSTV video stream, but if you copy the video stream DSTV still has a copy of it. Nobody walked into the offices of the NaspersProblem with a baseball bat, nobody was harmed or attacked.

And one can take this logic one step further: To whom does 900Mhz belong God or Icasa? Did the Bible give any government the right over air molecules, light or the electromagnetic spectrum. Air molecules as a means of communication belong to us all, but this doesn't mean one can install a speaker and beam noise at 100db. In the same way one can't pollute the electromagnetic spectrum by over-amping but by implementing the correct technology such as a combination of FSO and Wimax. There is nothing wrong with setting up your own cell LTE service on 900Mhz in such a way that Vodacom's networks aren't disrupted: The reasonable man principle applies.

Thus if you morally can't patent Amazon's one-click buying [b]Idea[/b], you can't patent or license or arbitrarily control: 1) FSO nor methods of generating energy. 2) Neither the formula for Lipitor drugs. 3) The electromagnetic spectrum.

Copyright is a semantic play on the word Patent: They both are essentially the same thing, the arbitrary control of an abstract concept. A concept which like the number 4 is neither here nor there, it exists only in your head.

And thus if you can't patent something, then neither can you copyright something. If you can't patent software, you can't patent hardware and thus by logic neither can you copyright software, DSTV Discovery video streams or any other implementation of an idea.

books
* http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749422 Maths you can't use * http://www.amazon.com/Patent-Failure-Bureaucrats-Lawyers-Innovators/dp/069113491X/ref=pd_sim_b_2 * http://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Its-Discontents-Endangering-Progress/dp/0691127948/ref=pd_sim_b_4

Novell patents
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/07/11/study-shows-patents-stifle-innovation/ This kind of confusion is typical of a document that has a distinct air of desperation about it. It suggests that the fans of intellectual monopolies are beginning to flail around for a handhold – any handhold – in an attempt to defy the pull of history, and to lock down knowledge through the use of overlong copyright and overbroad patents while they can. It is a further sign of increasing irrelevance of the G8 meeting as power begins to shift to the developing world, which has quite different ideas and priorities when it comes to enforcing Western monopolies on their internal markets.

Patent http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6868236/fulltext.html: "...Method for combining multiple optical beams in a free-space optical communication system...." Combining multiple leds or lasers to increase the optic power is an obvious innovation, something that can't be patented just like any other idea or concept can't be patented or copyrighted. Take Lipitor for example which is a statin product that reduces cholestrol. We should setup our own manufacturing labs. and crank out 40mg lipitor products ourselves in SA. The USA who has active trade sanctions against us prevents us from exporting food produce to them, is plundering Billions of dollars we don't have via and forcing by intimidation SA to uphold their bogus IP laws when it comes to pharmaceutical products. Use lie detector tests (see GizMag) to prevent bogus pills and SAPS traps to purchase from people making it in their labs. We can't make it in our homes the Scorpions will confiscate your property.

Software patents would have prevented the Internet
One man - one judge enabled software patents, had this deceived individual done so earlier the Internet might not have existed. This link http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2004-April/000604.html explains that the Telco's didn't want the Internet, had it not been for opensource collaboration the Internet would never have existed. PolitechBot In the marketplace, IP was a direct competitor to the private telephone companies' OSI -- that failed despite billions of dollars in direct government investment, compared to a few millions in the ARPAnet and NSFnet (predecessors of the commercial Internet). Point-to-Point Protocol, developed in open cooperation among a large number of companies, institutions, and individual consultants through the IETF. As an open source contributor, my PPP software proliferated into many projects, including proprietary products. And that's what allowed the "common user" to dial-up the Internet, leading to an entire industry of widespread Internet Service Providers. The [url]http://www.gridlockeconomy.com/[/url] explains that most people don't realize how putting a cage around ideas is directly leading to environmental destruction and death. South Africa is having billions of dollars extorted by IBM, Pfizer and others via International IP laws that could result in economic sanctions should we not comply. We have very scarce foreign exchange, of which a certain % must be repatriated to the USA for using their Imaginary Property. China in most cases refuse though.

software patents
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20071101145010612 Software patents I'd like to put that oft repeated misconception to rest. First, the same type of logic you use to debunk the myth that software patents are needed.. Pharmaceuticals are immensely profitable. Since profits = income - costs, their true costs must be nowhere near what is implied.. And/Or their income (read - sales) is too high. Secondly, much, if not most, research is done by (under)grad students at universities.. using government (meaning tax or 'our') money. Rather ironic that we, the people, should pay through the nose to buy what we payed through the nose to create.. All while pharmaceutical investors get rich on our illnesses? None of that detracts in any way from the truth that standards need to be available (read, open) to all & that software patents are even more foolish than physical world patents. For ever, it seems, engineers have battled politicos (logic versus emotion) over what is 'the best way'. It boggles the mind that in 2007, the world is still as irrational (money & power are more important than solving the worlds problems) as it was in the dark ages.

Why hackers will save the world
http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/node/406

http://go.internet.com/?id=474X1120&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geeksoc.org%2Fgcds%2FKeynote%3A%2520Glyn%2520Moody%2C%2520Why%2520Hackers%2520Will%2520Save%2520the%2520World.ogv

Copyright 100 years ago
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/07/18/1658211 'Many and numerous classes of public benefactors continue ceaselessly to pour forth their flood of useful ideas, adding to the common stock of knowledge. No one regards it as immoral or unethical to use these ideas and their authors do not suffer themselves to be paraded by sordid interests before legislative committees uttering bombastic speeches about their rights and representing themselves as the objects of "theft" and "piracy." http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2009/07/17/were-we-smarter-100-years-ago/

Pro Patent propaganda site funded by Microsoft
http://www.ipi.org/ A key to economic growth is participating in functioning markets, and markets do not function without property protection. Indeed, markets are created and facilitated by property rights. Intellectual property (IP), or the protection of specific inventions, creations and innovations, has always been a key to economic growth. But in today's information economy, intellectual property is a more important driver of economic growth than ever before. Hence, because of our strong emphasis on economic growth, IPI believes that intellectual property protection should be a key policy priority for policy makers. Ironically, today intellectual property is under attack as never before by a cadre of law professors, activists, and the economically naive who believe that somehow intellectual property is a barrier to innovation. So IPI is increasingly making intellectual property protection one of our key policy priorities. And while IP protection is obviously important to developed economies such as those of the United States, Europe, and Asia, intellectual property is also a key engine of economic opportunity for creators and innovators in developing countries. So IPI is engaged in the defense of intellectual property protection at the international level as well.

Building our own products because Altech can't
Patents are making it impossible for companies such as Altech to commercialize innovative ideas. Thus phenomenal advances in technology such as WiMax means nothing to us if a base station costs R150 000 because there are over 200 patent licensing fees must be paid by Altech. This is why manufacturing will increasingly be done via citizens themselves in countries with weak IP laws such as South Africa. SA IP laws are strong enough to prevent Altech from selling us cheap OFDM SoftwareDefinedRadios (100Meg over 100km) on 400Mhz but not strong enough for a "shadow network" of cooperation between SA citizens. Building a bridge and making WiMax devices are easy. There is nothing complicated about this from a technical point of view, it is the patents preventing engineers from implementing the correct technical solutions.

Wimax is just software
http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articlesmt/archives/microsoftisdead.shtml

"....Software companies are smart and inventive, and they will continue to come up with new, if ever more specialized, products. The industry will remain a large and important one, but it seems fated to resemble more and more a traditional, mature sector like manufacturing. It is no longer unthinkable to say that software's glory days lie in the past, not the future...."

Vodacom isn't a telecoms firm it is a legal firm with an antenna on it's roof. It doesn't own hardware towers it owns a set of OFDM, Viterbi and Reed-Solomon mathematical routines that it uses to transmit information. The towers wear out but mathematics will never wear out. When Vodacom bilks us R5/min for a phone call it is charging you for using a mathematical algorithm over and over again. Once we can lay our hands on these algorithms and IP cores such as 802.16e from SeaSolvewe would be able to establish mini Vodacoms on any frequency.

What is copyright
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/03/1628233&tid=172 And yet it really does get to the heart of the matter. What IS copyright, anyway? It started off as a bargain between the people of our country and the writers and artists who entertain, enlighten, and educate us: Create these works, and we'll respect your control over them (as a way to earn a living from your work) for some number of years, but ultimately they belong and will revert to all of humanity.

As a society we've been more than generous over the last century. No creative artist living today will EVER have to lose control over his work by simply living too long. (Ill-advised contracts notwithstanding) That is a tremendous gift, and as a result we as a society have allowed vast amounts of our culture to remain under the control of individuals and corporations, for the first time in human history. Think about that. For thousands of years, if you heard a story that you liked, or a song you liked, you would have been perfectly free to retell (or rewrite!) it as you saw fit, or sing it to a friend or audience, altering as you alone saw fit. We as a society have largely given up these rights, and are giving them up for longer and longer. In exchange we think we're getting better creative works (even though almost any writer will freely admit that he's no Shakespeare, who didn't enjoy nearly the control that we give today's writers)

And so it seems to me that with society giving up more and more rights to authors, and authors doing their best to make their works less accessible and less useful to society, it's not such a bad thing to start re-asking fundamental questions like "Should writers be paid at all for their work?"

Fair use isn't defined
* http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/18/1338249/RIAAs-Elementary-School-Copyright-Curriculum * http://www.lessig.org/blog/2009/04/update_on_warner_music.html

Copyright issues 1897
[0]Reservoir Hill writes "The NYTimes reported in their June 13, 1897 edition that [1]'Canadian pirates' were flooding the country with spurious editions of the latest copyrighted popular songs. 'They use the mails to reach purchasers, so members of the American Music Publishers Association assert, and as a result the legitimate music publishing business of the United States has fallen off 50 per cent in the past twelve months' while the pirates published 5,000,000 copies of songs in just one month. The Times added that pirates were publishing sheet music at 2 cents to 5 cents per copy although the original compositions sold for 20 to 40 cents per copy. But 'American publishers had held a conference' and a 'committee had been appointed to fight the pirates' by getting the 'Post Office authorities to stop such mail matter because it infringes the copyright law.' Interestingly enough the pirates of 1897 worked in league with Canadian newspapers that publ ished lists of songs to be sold, with a post office box address belonging to the newspaper itself. Half the money went to pay the newspapers' advertising while the other half went to the pirates who sent the music by mail." The AMPA never dreamed of suing their customers, though.
 * http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/05/01/1138225
 * http://reservoirhill.org/
 * http://www.bestactever.com/2009/04/26/the-long-war-music-piracy-in-1897-nytimes/

Forum posts on patents
http://www.eetimes.com/tigforums/thread.jspa?threadID=5062&tstart=0

http://www.eetimes.com/tigforums/thread.jspa?threadID=4892&tstart=0

http://www.eetimes.com/tigforums/thread.jspa?threadID=5065&tstart=0 I disagree with the idea of eliminating patents altogether, but I believe real reform must include establishing a threshold of innovation, so that every patent granted truly represents an invention -- an advancement of the state of the art. Too many patents are granted that are essentially regurgitations of patents already issued, sometimes long after the original monopoly period has expired. Others simply take an existing patent or patents and add an application that the original inventor may have assumed was obvious to those skilled in the art. Then the new "inventor" or his assignee is free to use this bogus new "invention" against the original inventor, the one who truly did advance the state of the art. An engineer working with a good patent agent or lawyer could make a career out of re-patenting other people's patents by re-wording them and adding some not-so-innovative claims that the original inventor overlooked, or again, assumed were obvious to those skilled in the art. If that doesn't define a broken intellectual property system, I don't know what does.

Mad patent disease
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216800006#community

Patent blogs
http://271patent.blogspot.com/2008/08/patent-reform-crawling-back-in-2008.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-on-lemley-and-intellectual.html

Patents law in South Africa
http://www.hahn.co.za/Article%20on%20Patent%20Litigation%20in%20South%20Africa.doc

Criminal sanctions are not available against patent infringements, except where this happens in contempt of a court order.
 * 5.2 Are criminal proceedings available? If so, what are the sanctions?

Fronting company for GPRS modems
Some law has made http://www.netstar.co.za legally liable if your engine gets remotely cutoff and you plow into a house burning it down. So we setup a fronting company with somebody who has nothing to loose that installs the GpsAndGprs takeing the blame etc. It is critical that a vehicle gets remotely cut-off because a thief will head for a FarradayCage through which not radio signal can transmit.

Build cheap wireless equipment
It isn't breaking the US law to publish a US patent on the Internet because it is already published at http://www.patentstorm.us. The patent is their protection so that even if you have the patent you can't commercialize it in the US nor SA. It is 100% legal to publish full circuit diagrams, gerber files and source code since in theory at least you won't be able to do anything with it. A patent gives the patent holder the right to pursue a claim in court, only the court can decide whether a patent is valid or not, the patent filer doesn't decide this!

Security fronting companies
Security companies are to afraid of getting sued if their dogs bite somebody, so we need to setup either our own fronting or SIRA registered security company. If this fronting company's dogs bite an intruder and gets sued then setup another fronting company or just ignore the lawsuit since the unemployed "director" of the company has no assets in anycase.

UAV fronting company
Same with a UAV(UnmannedAerialVehicles) if that plane crashes and burns down a forest the ownner will get sued for millions. To bad the "owner" has no assets. No insurance company for example will insure a UAV from crashing and burning down a house. The fact that there is not a legislative framework allowing insured commercial UAV deployment like Yamaha does in Japan is unfortunate. See http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/industrial/sky/solution/index.html UAVs has the potential to revolutionize rural,farm and city security. If Japan can allow these devices to be deployed on a large scale than somebody should bring this issue up with the South-African government.

Get the job done
We need to get the job done and if legislation prevents for-profit security companies from doing their work and people die because of this, then we need to use a little bit of lateral thinking and solve the problem ourselves.