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Rockstar holds the patent on email notifications

Has there ever been any positive value in allowing software patents? Because all I hear about regarding them is patent trolls.
 
Rockstar's litigation campaign has placed a cloud on Google's Android platform; threatened Google's business and relationship with its customers and partners, as well as its sales of Nexus-branded Android devices...

It adds:

Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies’ successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation.
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That is sick. It's a disease. It needs to be cut out completely.

Also, anyone who supports trolling like that is also sick.

Guess how much I hate software patents?
 
OnlyTellsTruths said:
That is sick. It's a disease. It needs to be cut out completely.

Also, anyone who supports trolling like that is also sick.

Guess how much I hate software patents?
Click to expand...

It is a gaming of the system taken to extremes. The patents describe concepts rather than specific technologies.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
It is a gaming of the system taken to extremes. The patents describe concepts rather than specific technologies.
Click to expand...

This.

I think there is a need for software patents. If you have a team of people working for a year to produce a massive piece of software, you want to protect that investment.

But protecting individual components, like a scroll bar, seems a bit much. Especially when, as you stated, they're patenting the concept, not the actual code and method used to do it.

It would be analagous to someone patenting a "car that can travel in excess of 80 miles per hour, and has a streamlined shape". I could see someone patenting a specific design of car that happened to have those features, and the materials and method used to make it...but trying to extend that to cover every sportscar is just silly.
 
Presumably if they judge it correctly the cost/benifit for the companies they target will always be to pay up rather than to fight.
 
Hellbound said:
This.

I think there is a need for software patents. If you have a team of people working for a year to produce a massive piece of software, you want to protect that investment.

But protecting individual components, like a scroll bar, seems a bit much. Especially when, as you stated, they're patenting the concept, not the actual code and method used to do it.

It would be analagous to someone patenting a "car that can travel in excess of 80 miles per hour, and has a streamlined shape". I could see someone patenting a specific design of car that happened to have those features, and the materials and method used to make it...but trying to extend that to cover every sportscar is just silly.
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Software doesn't need patent protection, it already has copyright protection.
 
I am worried that Google's response is so blusterous with little to back it up. Makes me feel like Rockstar will win but Google just wanted to get their side out in the press.
 
The thing is, patents aren't supposed to be granted for something that's obvious.

Email notification is obvious. Inventing email itself, that's worth a patent but the idea notifying someone via email is just obvious. What else would you use email for?
 
OnlyTellsTruths said:
Just imagine if an author was allowed to patent a plot line in a book. Or if a TV show could patent plot lines.
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It would be hard unless you can show that it's never been done before and isn't easily conceivable by those skilled in the art based on prior art. Also, patents only last 20 years. Copyrights last a lot longer.
 
Puppycow said:
The thing is, patents aren't supposed to be granted for something that's obvious.

Email notification is obvious. Inventing email itself, that's worth a patent but the idea notifying someone via email is just obvious. What else would you use email for?
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I think the patent is for the idea of having the phone vibrate or make a sound when a new email comes in.

Seconds turned to minutes until finally... Eureka!

It's a total racket. These companies set up brass plate offices in east Texas, so they can file in a jurisdiction where juries tend to be ignorant of technology. Then they hire local attorneys from the good ol' boy network.

One company rented a closet and named the real estate agent as their "director of business development."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...es-troll-to-defend-practice-before-jury.shtml
 
"System and method for notifying a user of an incoming communication event"
Claims "invention" of sound, vibration, or visual notification events when receiving an email or other message
Filed: Dec. 1997
Granted: Oct. 2002
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Funny, I thought that the existence of ASCII code 7 (BELL) would be ample evidence that the practice of using an audible notification of an incoming text transmission goes all the way back to the days of the teletype machine.

And if we move away from text messages, the use of sound to notify a person of an "incoming communication event" goes all the way back to the 19th century with the invention of the telephone.
 
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Senor_Pointy said:
Has there ever been any positive value in allowing software patents? Because all I hear about regarding them is patent trolls.
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Algorithms are usually (though, not always) good candidates for legitimate patents. Especially if they are complex and non-intuitive.

Basic ideas for things software can do are usually NOT good candidates for patents. Although a few have been granted, it usually isn't long before they are challenged. And it isn't long before they heat up into needless battles.

The classic example was Amazon's One-Click thingy. The idea for One-Click buying should not have been patentable. Perhaps their specific implementation, if it involved some clever algorithm for making the process more efficient, would have been something worth patenting. That assumes such an algorithm exists, though they might not have such a specific thing like that.

The problem, though, is that the specific implementation details are often kept secret. (If it was patented, then the "secret sauce" would have to be available to the public, in the filings.) So, the companies have to opt for protecting the more generic idea, instead. And, unfortunately, they can often get away with that.
 
Fizil said:
Software doesn't need patent protection, it already has copyright protection.
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I'm a bit legally illiterate, but I thought there were also legal protection for complex proprietary software as trade secrets.

Either way, I feel patents do serve a good function in most industries. But not for software or math. If I can inadvertently violate a couple of patents with a couple hours of Sunday-morning hangover coding, then there's a serious problem.
 
Mitchell314 said:
Either way, I feel patents do serve a good function in most industries. But not for software or math. If I can inadvertently violate a couple of patents with a couple hours of Sunday-morning hangover coding, then there's a serious problem.
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Not only can you, it would be hard not to.
 
Wowbagger said:
The classic example was Amazon's One-Click thingy. The idea for One-Click buying should not have been patentable. Perhaps their specific implementation, if it involved some clever algorithm for making the process more efficient, would have been something worth patenting. That assumes such an algorithm exists, though they might not have such a specific thing like that.
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Did Dilbert patent his Zero-Click technology? That was darn clever.

~~ Paul
 
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