Internet being sued [BU under threat]

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JaFO

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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they may not be allowed to patent it, but meanwhile they can threaten a whole heap of websites and profit from it as there's always going to be some that would rather pay than risk a lawsuit.

Being right simply is not enough to win a lawsuit.
At best you're tied up in courts until you're broke.
At worst you have to pay because they manage to convince a judge/jury that they were right.
 
dub

dub

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Feb 12, 2002
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JaFO said:
they may not be allowed to patent it
Click to expand...
They already have in the US, Australia and NZ. It's a registered patent.

I could care less personally as I live in Europe and they aren't going to affect anything here. :p
Just feel bad for any company they manage to leech money off in the states...

I'm adding "Now with visual links" to the header of my website xD
Now need to add a whole bunch of graphic sigs with links, like Hyru. :)
 
SlayerDragon

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
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They might get some money out of small companies but I do believe that MS and Google would annihilate them with their lawyer hordes. This kind of crap makes me wonder why he have patents and IP and all that fun crap.
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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IceCreamYou said:
It's impossible to patent something that practically everyone is already doing.

Right? :hmm:
Click to expand...

Wrong. In certain countries it is possible to buy out patents from their previous holders and basically do whatever you feel like doing with them.
 
dub

dub

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Feb 12, 2002
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heh on another forum I was saying patent breathing and you'll make a killing :)

It's not actually quite like that. You're not able to patent some things which are that broad in definition and other restrictions do apply.

But yeah, you sure can patent something that isn't yours. Happened a lot in history already I believe.
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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Hence the discomfort raised every time a law firm decides to pull a stunt like this off. It really is serious abuse of the patent and justice system. The objective is clearly to cash in on a patent with no contribution whatsoever in terms of production or innovation.

The way patents are delivered should be changed. As with copyrights patents should become public domain after a certain time. The nature of a patent should also be taken into consideration. If it is, as you point out, a patent on something that has become universal then it should have no legal standing.

On a sidenote there was some lobbying a few years ago by firms like Microsoft to push software patents in Europe. That might have opened the door to patenting something as basic as a for loop or a quick sort algorithm (I'm exagerrating slightly but still...). Thankfully a lot of people voted with their feet such that the European Parliament voted against the Commission's proposition.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4655955.stm
 
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Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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dub said:
But yeah, you sure can patent something that isn't yours. Happened a lot in history already I believe.
Click to expand...

Indeed, and a patent can describe a concept that doesn't necessarily have to be linked to a proof of concept or invention of some sort.

One famous example of the trouble patents can cause is Gordon Gould's legal battle to obtain one after inventing the laser. He initially attempted to file a patent in 1957 but only obtained it in 1977. In the meantime everyone was free to use his work and someone else could have acquired the patent in question.
 
JaFO

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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The only problem is that the companies that own the profitable copyrights keep extending that time-limit (I think it's 70 years or so because a certain mouse would have been in the public domain by now), which effectively means that nothing that is written in our time will ever enter the public domain.

I'm pretty sure that a time-limit on the patent-duration would suffer a similar fate.
ie : the option may exist in theory, but in reality it is useless.

Patents have a similar problem.
While a patent on breathing might be illegal however .. the only way to get it dropped is by taking them to court and proving that it either is trivial or has prior art, which can be quite expensive if the one that applied for the patent is a large company.

Heck ... the entire patent-law is useless for the people whose ideas it's meant to protect. They either can't afford to patent their ideas globally or they can't afford to attack any abuse of their patent.
 
dub

dub

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Feb 12, 2002
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Indeed. I must add I only put the "BU under threat" as a joke :)
I also guess they want to stress companies like MS and Google that much that either of them "have" to buy them up in order to keep them quiet. Which would suck too.
 
Hunter

Hunter

BeyondUnreal Newsie
Aug 20, 2001
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...Behind You...
www.unrealfans.com
from what I understand of the patent and how its wording if your linking to other sites, or pages, etc then its not patent infringement.

If they took me up on it i'd point out the fact that the patent they have is all based on how search results work, things like a google image search not linking images in an article or on a page in general.
 
IceCreamYou

IceCreamYou

disseminator of awesome
Jan 20, 2008
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http://cbp.beyondunreal.com/
www.icecreamyou.com
Just visited Vuestar's website. It made me ROFL. Their motto is "Good Ideas with Vision." :lol:

Vuestar said:
The Company offers to URL owners the opportunity to secure a “Licence of Use”
Click to expand...
They talk like they're doing a public service. :lol:

The website is also rife with poor grammar and punctuation. :hmm:

http://vuestar.biz/

Complaints ;) : http://vuestar.biz/contacts.php
 
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