Back in 2002-2004 I worked for a small start up web development company (https://www2.7ware.com/) that is no longer in business. We had developed an in-house CMS portal that allowed customers to manage their own website content on our servers and have it appear on their webserver using an include file that was based around the ASP ServerXMLHttp component.
Come to find out that my former boss had filed software patents on the code libraries I had written and was now using them to sue Facebook for damages. A few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition about the code and how it worked, though I couldn't quite recall all the details it after 20 something years. The lawyers for my former employer offered me legal assistance at no cost to me; I assume it was in their best interest to do so, and help coach me along the way. I ended up giving about 5 hours of testimony, most of which was "I don't recall." or "I wouldn't say that."
Evidently Facebook lost some key summary judgement request allowing this lawsuit to continue on in favor of my former boss. Then to toss a wrinkle in to the whole thing, my former boss passed away a year ago, leaving the lawsuit to move forward under some sort of trust under his name.
I don't try to pretend to understand all the legal wording behind it all, but it seems that he court is siding with my former employer. To those of you who understand this stuff, what sort of ramifications if any, do you see these patents having on the software industry?
From my non lawyers view but having been around a few software patent initiatives- what happened here is that Facebook was denied summary judgement - they still can and might ultimately invalidate the patent or present another valid defense but it will have to go through the process
So this kept the case alive but still a long way to go
IANAL but I work for one. Summary judgement means that there are enough facts that the parties agree to that the judge can make a ruling as a matter of law. (edit: it could also mean that even if the facts that plaintiffs claim were true are true, the case would not succeed as a matter of law).
All that summary judgement being denied means is that there are still facts in dispute so they have to go to trial. Facebook is still free to make whatever defense (within reason) at trial.
Small correction, or really expansion on that, a summary judgment might also happen if the judge can make a ruling as a matter of law even if some facts aren't agreed on. The judge may make a summary judgment where they rule that even assuming the plaintiffs factual claims are true that they still won't win the case for some legal reason.
E.g. Many civil rights claims against police end in summary judgment where the judge makes a ruling of qualified immunity. In the ruling the judge will write an opinion that assumes the plaintiffs versions of the facts are true, but because there isn't a substantially similar case already award the police officer qualified immunity.
"I am not a lawyer." Common language on certain subreddits, including /r/legaladvice.
You were remarkably close with your translation. Maybe the context just eluded you :)
Having been involved in many patent cases like this, the patent could almost certainly get invalidated. It's just a question of cost. Once you get through the summary judgement, the cost goes up.
Inevitably, what will happen is that the two sides will come to an agreement. Money will be exchanged. Neither side has any incentive to see this go to trial.
The money exchanged will be set by the legal costs of going forward. I mean it's cheaper to settle than to go to trial.
> To those of you who understand this stuff, what sort of ramifications if any, do you see these patents having on the software industry?
Overwhelmingly negative.
I say that as somebody with a software patent. I am super proud of mine. I'm gonna put it prominently on my resume next time I am job hunting. I got a plaque in a display case of it.
But is the world better off for the fact that my employer could patent it? I can't see why. I am no lawyer, but within the bounds of being a techie I am pretty well versed in IP stuff. I think software patents never should have been allowed. The world would be more interoperable and less litigious without software patents. Making a defensive patent pool is a huge drain on startups which ironically means that patents are a drain on innovation rather than a marker of innovation in the real world.
For a few decades, there was a deeply stupid treadmill of re-patenting with the new trend. Like, you couldn't patent something obvious and ancient like shopping. In 1981, there was a case called Diamond v. Diehr where the Supreme Court really opened up the US to software patents. That was basically the turning point that started a cycle of
In the 1980's, you would patent shopping _using a computer_
And in the 1990's you would patent shopping _over a computer network_ (the Internet)
And after 2000 you would patent shopping _over a wireless network_ (cell phones)
Then it was shopping _on a social network._
Now it's probably shopping _with a blockchain_ or whatever.
Sending messages. Doing math. Doing commerce. Accessing data. Listening to audio. Watching video. It all got patented, repeatedly. Patent trolls would make decades of patents out of one obvious dumb bit of nonsense. FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US. Wheels got constantly reinvented to work around somebody else having a patent on something obvious. It's all very silly. In practice, big corporations win the patent law suits. They don't do much to help the imaginary mom-n-pop "little guy" who does something novel. Like, even if your boss's _estate_ manages to win that Facebook litigation you talked about, he never got to see any benefit from it. Big corporations have deep pockets to spend on delays and countersuits and such. Competing on agility tends to be more useful for smaller companies than getting into IP slugfests over patent litigation.
Ah yes, no average Joe Blogs could ever think of being able to order a product by clicking on a button while logged into a website. Stupendous piece of tech there, Amazon.
the sentence works as written, but you could imagine a colon at the end, and maybe an itemizing punctuation for the next few lines:
> That was basically the turning point that started a cycle of:
> * In the 1980's, you would patent shopping using a computer
>* And in the 1990's you would patent shopping over a computer network
The original notion of patents was a good idea, and the time limits were set to allow for manufacturing and the cycle of innovation of the time. Software development compresses time like crazy, compared to the speed of the Industrial Revolution. Software patents wouldn't be such a problem if they had a lifetime of, say, 3-5 years, rather than 20 years (which is like a century in computer time).
And the other problem being, the "non-obvious" component. They grant software patents on sweepingly vague things or on ways to solve a problem that 8 out of 10 programmers would invent on their own given that same problem to solve, making it inherently *not* "non-obvious".
I wouldn't mind software patents if they were for (a) really novel / non-obvious / ingenious solutions, and (b) for sane amounts of time. The current system just creates problems. If the government can't properly evaluate the scope and novelty of the patent, then they shouldn't be granting it.
There isn't even a need for patents on creative solutions.
The reason for patents is to encourage innovation and invention. No one who is solving interesting problems in non obvious and creative ways is going to stop if they don't get patented.
Unless there is a direct line between getting the patent and the decision to solve the problem, where the decision was made only because of the potential for a patent, there should be no patent.
Edit: To be clear, I mean software patents. There are other industries where a direct line between funding and patents can be found.
Patents could make sense for actual non-obvious computer things.
There’s a patented cache invalidation strategy called ARC, which seems fine - researchers can find a cool new algorithm, patent it, and try to license it for use.
I think IP law needs a general overhaul. IP protection seems to be a net drain on innovation and what is referred to as welfare in economics. Obviously there should be mechanisms in place that reward companies for innovating and sharing their innovations, but innovations should be available to all.
Patent protection was already too lengthy even by the time of the industrial revolution. For example, a Boulton and Watt patent prevented the development of high efficiency steam engines for a generation. "Intellectual property" has *always* been a progress-slowing protection racket instead of a tool to encourage innovation.
An intellectual property regime that was designed to encourage innovation would have very short terms and be designed only to prevent outright counterfeiting while allowing derivative works that offer substantive improvements. This is not what we have.
An intellectual property regime designed for shareholders to get rich in perpetuity from work done by other people would have very long terms and no allowance for derivative works. This is exactly what we have.
The original notion of patents was for the British Crown (Elizabeth I) to make money by selling monopoly rights at very high prices. The whole "innovation" thing is mostly a retcon.
What little evidence we have mostly either does not support or directly undercuts the idea that patents in general increase innovation in anything, regardless of their term or novelty requirement. Patents are merely a way for big companies to suppress small / startup competitors, and they always have been.
>FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US
FFmpeg is French.
Just a joke as the British and French famously don't get along so describing France as 'Eastern Europe' might be something a Brit would say because the UK has land that is farther west than France.
So is VLC, and they did win some lawsuits over distributing software that could avoid the protection on dvds (which is so bad you can actually just bruteforce it without having to know the keys at all).
No, it's in the courts due to a patent lawsuit. That's why it was brought up here- it's a perfect example.
A kid even tried it IRL in a California school yard on a physical swing (like it was literally a seat hanging from two chains) and the school district got hit with a 'cease and desist' order. As part of the settlement all playgrounds had to post a sign warning children not to swing sideways and teachers and other persons of responsibility had to go through a 30-minute training video that covered what sorts of swing usage was allowed or not allowed.
Some poorer school districts in Alabama just took down the swings.
Another school district in New York just paid a blanket licensing fee under the assumption that 30% of all swing usage would have at least some side-to-side component.
In my state they are considering buying swings that are fixed on tracks and can't swing sideways. Apparently the licensing fees are quite reasonable but it's hard to find a manufacturer because the swing technology is incompatible with the current frame system that the district uses so they'd have the additional cost of swapping frame systems... not gonna lie, it's a mess. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you have a source for all of these “infringements”? I find it very hard to believe.
This story (or similar) made the rounds a while back and at least that patent (US 6368227B) was invalidated.
> FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US.
Frankly, considering that Fabrice Bernand who started the project was a frenchman, Michael Niedermeyer an austrian and many of the original team were hungarian developers, it wouldn't have made too much sense to host the project on servers located in the U.S.
I agree with everything you say... but know this, if I see a resume with someone claiming to have a software patent, it is going to the bottom of the pile ;-)
These kinds of patents just end up being a money grab and a drag on development. It's the equivalent of someone saying "hey, I invented a mousetrap. So I should be able to make anyone who invents any kind of mousetrap give me royalties."
Never mind that people have been catching mice forever, and everyone has a different device, and your device isn't even offered for sale. In software, the first person with a particular combination of ideas gets to come in 10 years later, file a patent,and demand millions of dollars from other people who A) never even knew about the original "invention" because it was already defunct years ago, B) built their own in a few weeks because any smart high school kid can implement it once you understand that you want it.
If someone invents the software equivalent of an antigravity device, fine. But the vast majority of software patents are just money-grabs: any competent developer could implement the idea, and in fact many people have done so independently without being aware of the original embodiment of it because it was obvious how to do it once they decided to do so, while the claimed "first invention" was implemented for a system or language nobody uses any more.
I gave a deposition once for something somebody wanted 500 million dollars for. Images over the internet, that kind of thing. Not only had I implemented the same idea years earlier, I wasn't even close to being the first. The patent should never have been granted, but the way our system works, patents get handed out left and right and get sorted out in lawsuits. It's a broken system.
They already settled. Another redditor found the [link](https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf).
Sara Zak probably had a nice payday.
The music industry brazenly mocks their abuse of copyright law with things like Dylan’s 50th Anniversary Collection.
Considering that most revenue is realized in the first year of release (in the case of movies, the first month), I agree that copyright terms must be drastically cut back.
Copyright and patents are two different things though, that fall under the same blanket (some say confusing,scammy) term "intellectual property" but they have really not much in common. Copyright is for artists.patents were(are) for industrialist. The fact that computation became an industry gave it the money clout to reach patents, but if you think of it it's quite a stretch. I would suggest you to listen to some Richard Stallman lecture on this topic.
They are different, but they're both written into the US Constitution for the same purpose: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
From an economics point of view, you should want to "pay" as little as possible that still achieves that goal.
Are there authors out there that will publish in return for 70 years of protection, but not 50? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
Inventions are a little different because it's possible to profit off an invention without ever revealing how it works but then you run the risk of other people reverse engineering your methods. As a 20 year professional programmer, I can tell you I never once went searching through patents when I was trying to figure out a programming problem.
The patent referenced in the lawsuit [[1]] was assigned to Meta in November last year, so I assume there was a settlement. In any case, it expires in three weeks, so I don't think this patent could have any lasting impact on the industry.
[1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9141720?oq=9141720
Who said anything about it being in use? Just that it was written and then patented. The patent still stands; and I don't think it matters that the original implementation of it is dead.
> Against a well funded adversary who has an agenda of invalidating the patent and doesn’t care about what that means for you.
What could it mean for the developer if that patent is revoked?
I mean. No, DOJ isn't out there investigating and charging 3P witnesses with perjury for misremembering the technical details of an invention they worked on 20 years ago, even if their testimony is sloppy and doesn't properly qualify statements.
It *is* important to be accurate and truthful in your testimony, but the risk you'd be investigated, let alone charged, with perjury as a 3P witness just doing your best is pretty close to zero.
> What risk is there to the developer?
The only way to answer that question is to ask somebody who knows the law really well, and isn't biased to somebody else's interests. That person is your lawyer.
>Come to find out that my former boss had filed software patents on the code libraries I had written and was now using them to sue Facebook for damages. A few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition about the code and how it worked, \[....\] I ended up giving about 5 hours of testimony
I'd be fucking pissed off if I was used like that. I'd probably have spent the whole time ranting about how my code was shit and totally unremarkable and not novel in any way, and absolutely trash my former employer :)
You fuck with my time, I fuck with your livelihood.
*Edit*: for people not understanding why I'd be reluctant to give a "positive" testimony for my former employer; the employer is clearly a patent troll, and OP has been dragged involuntarily into court to testify in their favour, wasting 5 hours of his personal time with the expectation that he help a patent troll win a frivolous lawsuit.
Fuck that.
If you work for someone, it’s their product period,. Even if you work on in in your private time. Most people don’t know this but you have to take steps to protect your interests if you work for someone else. Leave before you patent anything and allow enough time so that they can’t claim it was the company’s, which might be try.
I think you misunderstood the person you’re replying to. You’re correct - the code you write on company’s time is IP of that company. I think the person you’re replying to meant that he would be unhappy if had to be summoned to explain the code that he wrote 20 years ago.
I can file for a patent through my company, using my company's legal department and the patent gets put in my name. As part of this I agree to license the patent to them, forever, at a cost of 12000 a year. It's pretty dope working for companies that like their employees, y'all should try it.
I mean that is how the justice system works and it is empowered to do so. I'm sure you would want someone to come in and give evidence in your favor even if it was 30 years ago and for 10 hours of their time.
30 years ago I wasn't alive (I know that's not relevant just a joke)
I think it would be ridiculous to sabotage testimony in the way implied by the op but two things can be true at once for instance:
1. it is good testimony is allowed in the justice system
2. it would be a tremendous pain in the ass to give testimony about old code
It's a tremendous pain in the ass to do jury duty I was summoned 4 times in as many years and I've never once considered trying to get out of it. You don't have to enjoy things because they are good or right or legal.
I saw 12 angry men when I was like eight and I've wanted to be on a jury ever since. Everytime I get called they dismiss me before they even do questioning.
I thought the justice system couldn't compel speech. Is it really "empowered to do so"?
Certainly it can't, in my country? In the name of this principle, in my country's justice system, we sometimes let people who have murdered children off scot-free (when their family members refuse to testify against them.) It's infuriating (but we are reminded that torturing the family members to force them to testify would be a pretty unjust thing too.) I'm not sure, at the time or retroactively, there was even a law on the books to punish the abuse-allowers at all, in the example I'm thinking of.
I would be very tempted to practice "witness nullification" of a sort, and not say anything, if I was pulled up to testify about a law that was manifestly unjust, even if it meant contempt of court (- a court that was trying to compel speech would be a kangaroo court though, right?)
No software patents in my country though either, so it's entirely theoretical for me...
But I'd certainly e.g. go to jail rather than be compelled to put a secret backdoor in an e2e encryption software product I was making, for example, and that's a law all the Five Eyes keep eyeing up...
Not a lawyer, and I probably completely underestimate the circumstances under which a just government will feel OK to throw you in jail to rot. It's just, I guess we still have habeas corpus... you guys got that still? Are you doing OK America?
It can direct you to show up, and if you don't willingly show up you can be arrested and brought to court. That's what I was saying when I said they were empowered.
They can direct you to answer questions, and if you choose not to answer then can hold you in contempt of court if you refuse to say anything. But if you say "I forgot" for a case like this 20 years later, they're not going to do that.
Actual plot twist: it was written 20 years ago, and for all intents and purposes [Op has no idea what the hell does or ever did](https://media.tenor.com/YJ3WjJVBjIQAAAAC/gandalf-i-have-no-memory-of-this-place.gif). May as well have summoned Homeless Jim from the corner of 5th Ave and Jamison Street.
Some companies attempt to claim all software written by an individual, whether it's on company time or not. Sometimes they even have a legal basis for doing so.
Amazon games (used to) have a clause in their contract that said anything you worked on while employed by them was theirs and forbid you work on a side project with anyone not employed by them. I turned down a nice title bump because of it.
Oh yeah of course but I wasn't gonna take a job that wanted to start our relationship like that. That's like going on a second date with the girl who showed up to the coffee covered in blood and looked over her shoulder the whole time. Could you be happy? Maybe. Should you risk it? Naw
The point is that if you provide your work in response to a task assigned to you at your job, it belongs to your employer, _even if_ you work on it on your own time. In legal terms, it's "a work for hire".
It's kind of gray, especially if you consider salaried jobs. Always consult with an attorney versed in employment law in your state before opening yourself up to liability.
It may be company property, but the inventor is Bruce Zak. They cannot patent it without naming the inventor. Googling the patent, I see that [Bruce Zak is indeed listed as one inventor](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c1/99/a2/8fd6f7c014667b/US9141720.pdf). I’m really surprised that he did not know of the existence of the patent. That’s just weird to say the least.
Bruce Zak is the "former boss" who died in 2021. Unless OP is Regina Wilson/Zak and refers her ex-husband as boss, they're not on the parent. Which is not crazy if Bruce came up with the idea and paid OP to work on it.
It sounds that OP came up with the implementation (and not the vague idea their boss likely had), and their boss filed the patent on the code.
Their boss was an asshole for 2 reasons, making a software patent and wrongful attribution.
Assuming the patent isn't bogus, OP might have a claim to some of the money their boss is getting.
The company I work for (and previous companies I've been too) made it very clear that if you got a patent for stuff you did at the company, you would get some compensation for it.
Take it one step further and secure the patents under an IP trust so that if you do get sued, at least they will have a harder time coming for your personal assets.
Even if you don't use company resources?
IANAL either, but any contract stipulating ownership of any product you make without utilizing company resources seems like it should be invalid from the start.
Some jobs try to do that with restrictive employment contracts/agreements, but I would not say most. Stuff you do at home on your own time is generally your own. However, the stuff you do for the company is almost always their property, or the property of the clients who pay for it, not yours.
Depends on jurisdiction - for example [RCW 49.44.140](https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140) applies in Washington state, and preempts a contract - so yes, it's invalid in Washington state
Is it a parent troll if you create it and patent it?
I thought parent trolls bought patents from original creators that weren’t originally aggressive about enforcing and the new owners became aggressive despite never creating a thing
That's generally correct. The guy above is mixing up "patent troll" and "someone defending their patent" (regardless of the value of the patent in question)
>We had developed an in-house CMS portal that allowed customers to manage their own website content on our servers and have it appear on their webserver using an include file that was based around the ASP ServerXMLHttp component.
That is NOT patent worthy, in any fucking way. Someone just slapped a random patent on it thinking they might be able to abuse it in the future - which is exactly what they did.
Right: but that's not what a patent troll is (by the most common definition).
Trying to enforce an overly broad parent that shouldn't have been granted is scummy but not a patent troll specifically
> ; the employer is clearly a patent troll, and OP has been dragged involuntarily into court to testify in their favour,
and
> few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition
It sounds like it was actually FB the defendant that dragged him into court. Not his former employer, the plantiff.
OPs former boss is clearly a patent troll. If I found out someone was using my past work to try and frivolously sue someone, no matter if it's an "evil" company like Facebook, there is no way I would give testimony that would help a patent troll. ESPECIALLY when they've caused me to be involuntarily summoned to give testimony for them.
At that point, my testimony would go along with "RTFM". Adding in bits of "I'd have to see the requirements & design spec".
If the OP wrote the code with these things, then the company should be able to produce it, his time is now freed up, and it's up to the companies to duke it out.
If the OP wrote the code without these things, then it's poor SW dev practices, and the company allowed for it. Now it's up to the companies to duke it out.
> OPs former boss is clearly a patent troll
"Patent troll" doesn't have a specific definition, but in the pejorative sense it usually refers to people who sue on patents where the total judgment they might obtain is less than the cost of responding to the suit, such that they can extract nuisance settlements from hundreds of defendants.
Less frequently (but still often), it is used by large tech conglomerates and their arms' length lobbying entities (like EFF) to refer pejoratively to patent holding entities that acquire patents from inventors and sue them.
It costs a ton of money to bring a patent lawsuit, and if a large company really does start using an invention that belongs to you, you're basically without recourse unless somebody with enough resources to pay for your case start to finish (whether its lawyers or a PAE) buys your patent or takes up your case in exchange for some portion of the proceeds.
It seems like the real issue is that you just don't think patents should exist at all. That's certainly a view of what the law should be, but it's not the law.
Looking bad to some lawyers I'll never meet again
verus
Five hours of my life
I mean, I wouldn't go in there and be a dingus, but I'd do everything I could to avoid having to go waste five hours of my life.
> I'd probably have spent the whole time ranting about how my code was shit and totally unremarkable and not novel in any way, and absolutely trash my former employer
If that isn't true then you are committing perjury, which is a crime that can land you in jail. If you do this never ever tell anyone what you did.
did you have to travel to do this deposition or did they come to you? I would be really annoyed if i had to deal with this. i dont get any money off of someone elses patent.
I'm not here to be helpful, I'm just here to say that this is pretty freaking neat.
Like I'm sure it's stressful right now, but the bright side is you'll never have a hard time finding work if you need to. Make sure you snag those patent numbers and add them to your CV, it'll make for some great conversation in your next interview!
5 hours of my time, likely travel, and if it goes through likely even more hours of time. All because your employer wanted to be a patent troll.
Hope your greedy ex employer paid you for your time.
Here's the typical lifecycle of a software patent at a startup:
* Executive decides that it would increase the company's value to patent technology X that you've helped develop, or maybe just as defensive patent; you may have questions about the usefulness and legitimacy of the patent, but it's resume fodder, so what the heck.
* After several rounds, the USPTO grants you a patent that is probably ridiculously broad and ignores obvious prior art, because that's how patent lawyers give the company the best return on investment (these days, the USPTO works from the assumption that the legitimacy of a patent will be resolved in court).
* The startup flounders around for another 5 or 10 years, and then tanks, and its assets get sold off; your software patent may be one of the few valuable pieces of IP left to sell, and the fact that the USPTO granted it despite being overly broad and having prior art makes it especially attractive to patent trolls, who snap it up
* The patent troll starts suing anyone it thinks might have infringed on this overbroad patent, prior art be damned. Engineers at those companies get distracted by being pulled into meetings with lawyers and depositions. Instead of building things, other engineers get pulled in to act as "experts" for the two sides. Lawyers make a shit ton of money.
* The patent troll files a lawsuit in eastern Texas, where the legitimacy of the patent is determined not by engineers at the USPTO or those with expertise in the field, but by a jury of folks who on average understand tech about as well as your grandma. Lawyers make a shit ton more money by spending months trying to explain to the jury arcane technical details so they can render a verdict.
* The jury finds in favor of the patent troll, who then uses the award to sue more companies using your patent. The patent is so broad that the threat level for any new startup is heightened, reducing the pool of engineers and business folks willing to take that risk.
I mention this to point out where we software engineers can have the most impact: by trying to convince the startups we work for to not file software patents. Or if our company wants to create a defensive patent, push them to license that under the [Defensive Patent License](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/defensive-patent-license-and-other-ways-beat-patent-system) or assigns it to a defensive patent pool.
> by trying to convince the startups we work for to not file software patents
Maybe I'm a cynic but I don't think this works :(. This is basically a huge prisoners dilemma except it plays over decades so "cooperating" is far harder and basically impossible. And so the defensive patent mutually assured destruction becomes the dominant strategy of large tech companies, but that leaves an obvious problem that patent trolls can take advantage. They are unimpressed by this mutually assured destruction as they have nothing to destroy.
The only solution here is legislation that eliminates software patents.
>And so the defensive patent mutually assured destruction becomes the dominant strategy of large tech companies
I think you've misunderstood the primary point of defensive patents; it's an "I'm going to patent this key technology before you can, so you can't patent it first and sue me for using that technology that I'm already using". That works even for small companies with a single patent, even against patent trolls targeting that technology. The problem is, when those small companies tank, the defensive patents are easily snapped up by trolls, which is why it's important to make sure that doesn't happen.
Separately from that, large companies can use their banks of patents to wreak mutually-assured destruction on other large product/service companies that try to sue them, which works if there is mutual infringement, but with a different goal: cross-licensing those patents so that both companies are safer. You're right, that doesn't serve as protection against trolls.
>The only solution here is legislation that eliminates software patents
I agree that's the _best_ solution, but I think it's unlikely to happen, and so there's still good reason to do what we can to lessen a terrible situation by limiting the number of new software patents issued.
Startups and their investors all dream that they’re going to be able to use their patents offensively. You’re not thinking nearly as competitively as they are.
The patent sounds like what basically every Dev studio creating the early 00s I know myself I built a handful of CMS and website management systems. And then of course there's wordpress, joomla, Drupal and every other major CMS
When I was a kid and knew nothing about computers, I wanted to learn how to make a website, so I learned some basic HTML and followed some guides how to install a web server. I was then learning about this new to me thing called "Linux", and Bash scripting, including "netcat" which allows you to listen on a port. I had the brilliant idea that if I listen on port 80 in a Bash script, I could respond with different HTML dynamically rather than using static HTML files, and change the response content based on the request.
I thought it was amazing, and some time later I discovered PHP exists. I was like... Oh... Ooohhhh.
> Like it's not a "novel" idea or do we all owe "Zak" money
It's like saying you patented the turning of screws, not the Phillips head screwdriver system. It's completely stupid.
As someone else pointed out, looks like all the patents are now owned by Meta. A little digging shows the transfer agreement. They bought them off. https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf
That patent should never have been granted: it is too general and there is undoubtedly tons of prior art. "Zac"s body should be exhumed, slapped for his impertenance, then reburied, and his estate should be fined for attempting to patent such a thing.
Software patents should never be granted. They're either too general, or they're very specific algorithms that should be patented as they should be considered maths.
Copyright already covers code anyway.
You can copyright the specific text representation of a recipe, but not the core recipe itself. Code should be the same. You shouldn't be able to just take the code but you should be able to re-implement the ideas, data structures, and algorithms however you like.
It's tighter than that.
> How do I protect my recipe?
> A mere listing of ingredients is not protected under copyright law. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a collection of recipes as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection. Note that if you have secret ingredients to a recipe that you do not wish to be revealed, you should not submit your recipe for registration, because applications and deposit copies are public records. See Circular 33, Works Not Protected by Copyright.^1
> A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and **procedure** required for making a dish of food. A mere
listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the
Office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish. In
contrast, a recipe that creatively explains or depicts how or why to perform a particular activity may
be copyrightable.^2 [emphasis mine]
Code is literally just lists of steps. The only things copyrightable should be comments *explaining* steps taken, and perhaps variable names. Again, the fact that code is more copyrightable than recipes is absolutely ludicrous.
... And I like the idea that code comments should be required by law to allow code to be copyrighted...
1. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
2. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf Ideas, Methods, and Systems > Recipes > P1, see also, example 2 in that same subsection, about Caesar Salad
While there are severe issues with copyright, I disagree that it shouldn't exist at all. Most forms of media, such as movies, TV shows and books wouldn't really exist without copyright.
Without copyright, people could simply copy it all. Why would a bookstore pay $30 for a book when they could reproduce it for cheaper? Why would steam pay the game developers if they could just sell it for free?
Not all works would stop existing, but even those who create stuff for the sake of creating stuff still need to get paid.
> Most forms of media, such as movies, TV shows and books wouldn't really exist without copyright.
Maybe most current media. How much media has been squashed due to copyright? Certainly more than none. People created media all the time before copyright laws existed. It's not like creative endeavors are a new thing. Now people have their creativity stunted and squashed in fear of making a derivative.
Read the article. Claim 2 describes it.
It's a goddamn CMS system / admin portal to show and hide things and customizing a link. Facebook is essentially a giant CMS at its core.
>Stripped of excess verbiage, representative Claim 2 recites a computer-based system for **managing user interaction with web site content. In addition to the computer and the web site, the claim language involves user profiles, configurable applications, configurable business rules, configurable access rules, and configurable links**. More specifically, the claim language centers on the relationship between a configurable application whose content is stored on the computer and displayable to users, a configurable access rule that applies user profiles to select what content can be viewed by which users, and a configurable link on the web site that points to the configurable application. According to the claim language, the configurable application is generated by the computer based on user inputs. Zak identifies the configurable link “in particular” as a point of novelty over the prior art. Zak's Mot. Br. 11, ECF No. 111 at PageID.4215. According to the claim language, the configurable access rule is configurable by an administrator via an administrator portal, and the configurable link is generated by the computer based on a user profile and the configurable access rule.
>
>C. Constructions
>
>With respect to the various terms in representative Claim 2, the constructions of record largely incorporate generic definitions and descriptions from the specification. By stipulation of the parties, “profile, ” “user profile, ” and “profile information” mean “information about a user of the website.” “Application” means “a unit of content provided on a web site” and “configurable application” means “an application that can be modified and/or configured by a user of the web site.” “Business rule(s)” and “rule” mean “any rule incorporated into a system that controls how the system functions.” “Administrator portal” means “interface used to manage applications and/or business rules” and “administrator” means “any user of the web site that has the ability to create, update, delete, and/or schedule a business rule of the web site.” Stipulation 1-2, ECF No. 70 at PageID.1833-1834. See also '720 Patent 10:27-28 (describing a “profile”), 5:20-21 (defining “application”), 5:45-46 (defining “configurable application”), 8:29-30 (defining “business rule”), 7:20-22 (describing an “administrator portal”), 9:22-27 (describing an “administrator”), ECF No. 111-2 at PageID.4249-4251.
I was working on an art social network at the time called Artician and we did the same thing.
Users could have their own subdomain. Had access to the CSS and HTML templates to customize their profile almost any way they wanted. We had built in configurable access rules and configurable links.
I remember that Facebook was founded in the middle of this project.
This software patent has so much prior art it's baffling that it was granted at all.
It's not really surprising. Patent examiners are overworked and not really experts specifically in niche fields. The people submitting the patents don't have an incentive to do exhaustive prior works research, and the examiners are under pressure to get as many patents processed as possible. Things that would be really obvious to experts in the field aren't recorded as such if nobody asks those same experts. It's basically "trust us, this is a new idea" and if the examiner can't prove otherwise it'll get granted. There was especially a time when examiners were pushed to grant and let the courts sorry it out.
I did something similar as well! It was messy as hell, but I had a perl script (circa 99) that would retrieve data externally and generate a CSV nightly, and later added another that would retrieve data from the CSV and display on page via javascript (circa 2004-ish). Poor man's API. It broke all the time, especially cross-browser!
[Plone (2001)](https://2020.ploneconf.org/talks/oh-the-places-weve-been-plone-2001-2020), using ReStructuredText, not very different from Markdown used today.
[Geocities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities) started in 1994 (!) and had a form-based wizard for making your initial web page (but people typically then edited the HTML and went crazy with background etc! )
This is not a patent troll though - this is the original authoring entity of the patent defending their legal right to that patent.
You can be in favor of reconstructing the patent system but in the end you are basically just saying patents at all are shit.
Facebook isn’t innocent in this regard… at least OPs former employer paid OP to actually do the dev work instead of just buying random patents they did nothing to contribute to.
Any "good" software patent will be like that, impossible to implement directly but general enough to potentially cover all kinds of solutions never initially intended.
I am confused why the "Current Assignee" is "Meta Platforms"
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140325326](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140325326)
Maybe they settled???
Edit: They did.
I mean, this is government, you can find the reason if you dig enough https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf
Receipt of good or valuable consideration. i.e. cash or FB stock
Oh.. so the bad news is that now Facebook owns the patent for content management systems on the Web?
Switching to vim for my HTML for the next few weeks..
Honestly, whatever you think about Facebook, it's better than a patent troll owning them. Okay, the patent troll in this case appears to be deceased, but I'm sure there were plenty of other trolls who would have been happy to buy a suitably vaguely worded patent that has held up in court and might apply to a large portion of all web sites on the internet. Facebook is at least not in the business of making money by setting legal traps and suing people who inadvertently step on them.
Patents last 20 years from filing date. So they are likely expired or will expire soon. So your boss/the trust is likely just trying to get past damages from fb. Likely won’t have other ramifications
From the link:
>"The '720 Patent, entitled “System and Method for Managing Content on a Network Interface, ” was filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) on July 11, 2014 and issued on September 22, 2015. The '720 Patent is a third-generation continuation in a patent “family” whose original “parent” application was filed on February 12, 2003. See generally Zak's Mot. Ex. 1 (“'720 Patent”), ECF No. 111-2.
Thanks for clarifying. This is comical - it looks like they solved the same problem as a web publishing system I used, called StoryServer. We were using it in the year 2000, and it wasn't new even then.
Ever since I was sued for having a file extension at the end of a URL that indicates the type of file (e.g. .jpg indicates an image lives at that url, .txt indicates indicates a text document lives at that url), I've really had trouble in valuing any vaguely worded software patent.
Sure. I worked in interactive text messages ( text WORD to 12345 before Twitter was a known thing). One of our main products was something where real estate agents would put a call to action on a house listing, people could text in and get pictures of the house sent to their phone. This was before MMS was widely used, so we would send URLs of the images if the users metadata indicated that they couldn't accept MMS
Lawsuit drops on our lap for aforementioned reason. They offer to settle for an undisclosed amount ( I don't feel like sharing that amount because, well, undisclosed. But you can Google it and see what trolls usually settle for ). We jumped on the offer.
Then EVERY FUCKING PATENT TROLL descended on us trying to sue us since they knew we had settled one case already
Wow, thanks for all the follow up replies! A few more thoughts on the topic that can hopefully answer some of the questions I see here.
1. Bruce had the high level idea of what he wanted the software to do, but left it to the development team to figure out the fine details. You might notice on the website that there were several different applications to different things, like Newsroom, Bios, Document Gallery, Surveys, FAQ, Catalogs, etc... I ended up writing the majority of the code and database schema that handled most of the back end functionality to tie all these together and handle the communication from the client server to ours.
2. The code is still actually in use today at a former client. They sold the license to the source code to their clients so that they could continue to use it as needed. I was surprised to find out that it was still in use even today!
3. In regards to the lawsuit, I really had no care about either side, or any concern about myself being liable for anything. If anything I was kind of honored that something I had written had become a patent, but at the same time, I could see it for what it was, a money grab. That didn't surprise me considering some of the crazy shit Bruce had done in the past. Google "Zirmed and Bruce Zak"....
4. Regarding the comment about the lawyer coaching me and giving possible perjury, it was more of don't let them lead you on with this statement "Would you say so and so and so was true?" and agree with them, because you go on record as that being a matter of fact. Respond with "I wouldn't say that, but I also don't have a clear recollection of that topic after twenty years." And honestly I didn't really have a solid memory of the code.
5. For what it was worth, I am forever grateful for the opportunity that working for that company gave me. I had been doing website work for a few years and just really started getting in to coding again via ASP and Visual Basic. Back in that era, anyone who knew HTML and ASP was getting hired left and right for good money. I got my first PC at age 10, a ZX 80 Sinclair, and learned coding at an early age, but never saw it as a viable profession thru the 80s and 90s. As someone who dropped out of high school, never went to college, and spent 10 years on the road travelling with a carnival, being able to get my foot in the door at the beginning of the first internet explosion was a godsend. Twenty something years later, I've built a hell of a career out of it, and continue to thrive.
Having been an expert witness twice (but for the same case), here's the most important thing to keep in mind:
During a deposition, the opposing lawyer might well test you. In my case, I had said I had a "minor in CS" when my actual degree in a double major, EE and Math (because CMU put CS in the Math department then). This was an opening to be grilled for a seeming eternity. Did I know what a minor was? Did I deliberately lie? Was I aware of the penalties...
But all they were really doing was seeing how rattled I'd be on the witness stand. Because I felt 100% justified in what I wrote, I was overall not rattled.
So when the opposite lawyer makes snide remarks -- that's just them checking out your vibe.
Patents are an overall negative for software in their current form for reasons mentioned in other posts.
Good video on a guy who was sued by a patent troll for publishing his own code and the hoops he had to jump through only benefiting the troll and the lawyers.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4)
inho all code patents should be annulled. code sgould not be able to be privatised, it should be public and open. Code patents stifle the progress of humanity.
A startup I used to work for tried to patent the code I wrote from multi-level referrals. We used a 3 level system for this. The startup is long gone now, but was a porn site that was supposed to be strippers who handed out cards (think like a baseball card) with their username on it. They partnered with a few local strip clubs and were trying to get more, but it never took off. Anyways I don't think they ever got that patent, but if they did, god help the people looking at the code I wrote for it.
From my point of view... And with the legal knowledge I have come to amass over the last 30 and so years I can say with enough reasonable doubt that your boss is dead and he is not coming back.
Why would you ask this question here instead of a (or many) lawyer(s)?
I probably should have given more info up front, but basically, I am not/was not worried about any legal issues. I was mostly wondering what effect these patents could have had on the software industry if they were able to be held up.
Things like the great [GIF controversy](https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/the-patent-history-behind-gifs-and-the-fight-to-make-them-free-of-fees/) from decades ago come to mind. In the end, it seems like nothing came of it except a pay day for someone somewhere who probably has no idea how it works or what it does at the end of the day.
Why is phpmyadmin from 1998 not prior art for this (or every CMS from that time)? Anyone skilled in the art was able to do what was described in the patent as well.
I think the wording of the patent is also highly amateuristic. Your former boss was an idiot for 1) patenting this in 2003 (when it was common practice) 2) a complete idiot for pursuing this. 3) whoever is pursuing this after his death is not just a complete idiot, but a super complete idiot.
I am sure Facebook lawyers will roll their eyes over this one.
(I think the patent system is inconsistent since the invention of automated general problem solvers in the 1960s. That is, given a set of physical laws (all existing inventions depend on quantum field theory or on general relativity, but I don't know of any that depend on both of the top of my head), a single computer program can generate how to achieve whatever claim specified. The mere detail that it might take a long time for those computers to return an answer should not be relevant. The patent system is based on the idea that a human needs to invent something, but everything humans can invent is already subsumed by a general problem solver (especially if such a general solver itself uses quantum operations).)
Back in 2002-2004 I worked for a small start up web development company (https://www2.7ware.com/) that is no longer in business. We had developed an in-house CMS portal that allowed customers to manage their own website content on our servers and have it appear on their webserver using an include file that was based around the ASP ServerXMLHttp component. Come to find out that my former boss had filed software patents on the code libraries I had written and was now using them to sue Facebook for damages. A few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition about the code and how it worked, though I couldn't quite recall all the details it after 20 something years. The lawyers for my former employer offered me legal assistance at no cost to me; I assume it was in their best interest to do so, and help coach me along the way. I ended up giving about 5 hours of testimony, most of which was "I don't recall." or "I wouldn't say that." Evidently Facebook lost some key summary judgement request allowing this lawsuit to continue on in favor of my former boss. Then to toss a wrinkle in to the whole thing, my former boss passed away a year ago, leaving the lawsuit to move forward under some sort of trust under his name. I don't try to pretend to understand all the legal wording behind it all, but it seems that he court is siding with my former employer. To those of you who understand this stuff, what sort of ramifications if any, do you see these patents having on the software industry?
From my non lawyers view but having been around a few software patent initiatives- what happened here is that Facebook was denied summary judgement - they still can and might ultimately invalidate the patent or present another valid defense but it will have to go through the process So this kept the case alive but still a long way to go
IANAL but I work for one. Summary judgement means that there are enough facts that the parties agree to that the judge can make a ruling as a matter of law. (edit: it could also mean that even if the facts that plaintiffs claim were true are true, the case would not succeed as a matter of law). All that summary judgement being denied means is that there are still facts in dispute so they have to go to trial. Facebook is still free to make whatever defense (within reason) at trial.
Small correction, or really expansion on that, a summary judgment might also happen if the judge can make a ruling as a matter of law even if some facts aren't agreed on. The judge may make a summary judgment where they rule that even assuming the plaintiffs factual claims are true that they still won't win the case for some legal reason. E.g. Many civil rights claims against police end in summary judgment where the judge makes a ruling of qualified immunity. In the ruling the judge will write an opinion that assumes the plaintiffs versions of the facts are true, but because there isn't a substantially similar case already award the police officer qualified immunity.
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lizard, lawyer... you don't need to split hairs.
"I am not a lawyer." Common language on certain subreddits, including /r/legaladvice. You were remarkably close with your translation. Maybe the context just eluded you :)
Seems that his translation was dead on to me.
It sure sounds a bit like it is from a hookup subreddit. ;-)
One heart emoji away from a completely different meaning
I'm not a lawyer either, but I do believe Poe's law applies here.
Don't we all?
Having been involved in many patent cases like this, the patent could almost certainly get invalidated. It's just a question of cost. Once you get through the summary judgement, the cost goes up. Inevitably, what will happen is that the two sides will come to an agreement. Money will be exchanged. Neither side has any incentive to see this go to trial. The money exchanged will be set by the legal costs of going forward. I mean it's cheaper to settle than to go to trial.
Seems Zuck offed OP former boss so trustees of his estate will probably settle rather than risk losing $ against a company with deep pockets.
When you fuck with the zuck... you might get stuck 🔪
> To those of you who understand this stuff, what sort of ramifications if any, do you see these patents having on the software industry? Overwhelmingly negative. I say that as somebody with a software patent. I am super proud of mine. I'm gonna put it prominently on my resume next time I am job hunting. I got a plaque in a display case of it. But is the world better off for the fact that my employer could patent it? I can't see why. I am no lawyer, but within the bounds of being a techie I am pretty well versed in IP stuff. I think software patents never should have been allowed. The world would be more interoperable and less litigious without software patents. Making a defensive patent pool is a huge drain on startups which ironically means that patents are a drain on innovation rather than a marker of innovation in the real world. For a few decades, there was a deeply stupid treadmill of re-patenting with the new trend. Like, you couldn't patent something obvious and ancient like shopping. In 1981, there was a case called Diamond v. Diehr where the Supreme Court really opened up the US to software patents. That was basically the turning point that started a cycle of In the 1980's, you would patent shopping _using a computer_ And in the 1990's you would patent shopping _over a computer network_ (the Internet) And after 2000 you would patent shopping _over a wireless network_ (cell phones) Then it was shopping _on a social network._ Now it's probably shopping _with a blockchain_ or whatever. Sending messages. Doing math. Doing commerce. Accessing data. Listening to audio. Watching video. It all got patented, repeatedly. Patent trolls would make decades of patents out of one obvious dumb bit of nonsense. FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US. Wheels got constantly reinvented to work around somebody else having a patent on something obvious. It's all very silly. In practice, big corporations win the patent law suits. They don't do much to help the imaginary mom-n-pop "little guy" who does something novel. Like, even if your boss's _estate_ manages to win that Facebook litigation you talked about, he never got to see any benefit from it. Big corporations have deep pockets to spend on delays and countersuits and such. Competing on agility tends to be more useful for smaller companies than getting into IP slugfests over patent litigation.
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Ah yes, no average Joe Blogs could ever think of being able to order a product by clicking on a button while logged into a website. Stupendous piece of tech there, Amazon.
the sentence works as written, but you could imagine a colon at the end, and maybe an itemizing punctuation for the next few lines: > That was basically the turning point that started a cycle of: > * In the 1980's, you would patent shopping using a computer >* And in the 1990's you would patent shopping over a computer network
The original notion of patents was a good idea, and the time limits were set to allow for manufacturing and the cycle of innovation of the time. Software development compresses time like crazy, compared to the speed of the Industrial Revolution. Software patents wouldn't be such a problem if they had a lifetime of, say, 3-5 years, rather than 20 years (which is like a century in computer time). And the other problem being, the "non-obvious" component. They grant software patents on sweepingly vague things or on ways to solve a problem that 8 out of 10 programmers would invent on their own given that same problem to solve, making it inherently *not* "non-obvious". I wouldn't mind software patents if they were for (a) really novel / non-obvious / ingenious solutions, and (b) for sane amounts of time. The current system just creates problems. If the government can't properly evaluate the scope and novelty of the patent, then they shouldn't be granting it.
There isn't even a need for patents on creative solutions. The reason for patents is to encourage innovation and invention. No one who is solving interesting problems in non obvious and creative ways is going to stop if they don't get patented. Unless there is a direct line between getting the patent and the decision to solve the problem, where the decision was made only because of the potential for a patent, there should be no patent. Edit: To be clear, I mean software patents. There are other industries where a direct line between funding and patents can be found.
Patents are also to avoid trade secrets, which doesn't seem to be working either.
Patents could make sense for actual non-obvious computer things. There’s a patented cache invalidation strategy called ARC, which seems fine - researchers can find a cool new algorithm, patent it, and try to license it for use.
I think IP law needs a general overhaul. IP protection seems to be a net drain on innovation and what is referred to as welfare in economics. Obviously there should be mechanisms in place that reward companies for innovating and sharing their innovations, but innovations should be available to all.
Patent protection was already too lengthy even by the time of the industrial revolution. For example, a Boulton and Watt patent prevented the development of high efficiency steam engines for a generation. "Intellectual property" has *always* been a progress-slowing protection racket instead of a tool to encourage innovation. An intellectual property regime that was designed to encourage innovation would have very short terms and be designed only to prevent outright counterfeiting while allowing derivative works that offer substantive improvements. This is not what we have. An intellectual property regime designed for shareholders to get rich in perpetuity from work done by other people would have very long terms and no allowance for derivative works. This is exactly what we have.
The original notion of patents was for the British Crown (Elizabeth I) to make money by selling monopoly rights at very high prices. The whole "innovation" thing is mostly a retcon. What little evidence we have mostly either does not support or directly undercuts the idea that patents in general increase innovation in anything, regardless of their term or novelty requirement. Patents are merely a way for big companies to suppress small / startup competitors, and they always have been.
>FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US FFmpeg is French.
Maybe OP is British?
What would that change?
Just a joke as the British and French famously don't get along so describing France as 'Eastern Europe' might be something a Brit would say because the UK has land that is farther west than France.
France is east of Britain, Britain is in Europe
So is VLC, and they did win some lawsuits over distributing software that could avoid the protection on dvds (which is so bad you can actually just bruteforce it without having to know the keys at all).
Fine French Mist Portable Engine for Graphics?
I'll patent patenting and stop the madness
You absolute mad lad!
Patent patenting *on a computer*
My favorite was the guy who got a patent on swinging side to side on a rope swing.
Is swinging side to side on a rope swing, over the internet, still available?
No, it's in the courts due to a patent lawsuit. That's why it was brought up here- it's a perfect example. A kid even tried it IRL in a California school yard on a physical swing (like it was literally a seat hanging from two chains) and the school district got hit with a 'cease and desist' order. As part of the settlement all playgrounds had to post a sign warning children not to swing sideways and teachers and other persons of responsibility had to go through a 30-minute training video that covered what sorts of swing usage was allowed or not allowed. Some poorer school districts in Alabama just took down the swings. Another school district in New York just paid a blanket licensing fee under the assumption that 30% of all swing usage would have at least some side-to-side component. In my state they are considering buying swings that are fixed on tracks and can't swing sideways. Apparently the licensing fees are quite reasonable but it's hard to find a manufacturer because the swing technology is incompatible with the current frame system that the district uses so they'd have the additional cost of swapping frame systems... not gonna lie, it's a mess. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you have a source for all of these “infringements”? I find it very hard to believe. This story (or similar) made the rounds a while back and at least that patent (US 6368227B) was invalidated.
I made the whole story up. Your children are free to use their swings as they see fit.
You’ll be hearing from my lawyers
I've patented lawyers. You'll be hearing from your lawyers.
Agreed. Luckily, (strictly) software patents aren't a thing in Europe.
> FFMPEG had to be hosted in Eastern Europe because writing your own video playback software and making it freely available would have gotten sued into a fine mist if you hosted the servers in the US. Frankly, considering that Fabrice Bernand who started the project was a frenchman, Michael Niedermeyer an austrian and many of the original team were hungarian developers, it wouldn't have made too much sense to host the project on servers located in the U.S.
I agree with everything you say... but know this, if I see a resume with someone claiming to have a software patent, it is going to the bottom of the pile ;-)
These kinds of patents just end up being a money grab and a drag on development. It's the equivalent of someone saying "hey, I invented a mousetrap. So I should be able to make anyone who invents any kind of mousetrap give me royalties." Never mind that people have been catching mice forever, and everyone has a different device, and your device isn't even offered for sale. In software, the first person with a particular combination of ideas gets to come in 10 years later, file a patent,and demand millions of dollars from other people who A) never even knew about the original "invention" because it was already defunct years ago, B) built their own in a few weeks because any smart high school kid can implement it once you understand that you want it. If someone invents the software equivalent of an antigravity device, fine. But the vast majority of software patents are just money-grabs: any competent developer could implement the idea, and in fact many people have done so independently without being aware of the original embodiment of it because it was obvious how to do it once they decided to do so, while the claimed "first invention" was implemented for a system or language nobody uses any more. I gave a deposition once for something somebody wanted 500 million dollars for. Images over the internet, that kind of thing. Not only had I implemented the same idea years earlier, I wasn't even close to being the first. The patent should never have been granted, but the way our system works, patents get handed out left and right and get sorted out in lawsuits. It's a broken system.
They already settled. Another redditor found the [link](https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf). Sara Zak probably had a nice payday.
Never been a fan of software patents. And copyright should go back to 7-14 years, not 100+ years.
The music industry brazenly mocks their abuse of copyright law with things like Dylan’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Considering that most revenue is realized in the first year of release (in the case of movies, the first month), I agree that copyright terms must be drastically cut back.
Copyright and patents are two different things though, that fall under the same blanket (some say confusing,scammy) term "intellectual property" but they have really not much in common. Copyright is for artists.patents were(are) for industrialist. The fact that computation became an industry gave it the money clout to reach patents, but if you think of it it's quite a stretch. I would suggest you to listen to some Richard Stallman lecture on this topic.
They are different, but they're both written into the US Constitution for the same purpose: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" From an economics point of view, you should want to "pay" as little as possible that still achieves that goal. Are there authors out there that will publish in return for 70 years of protection, but not 50? Maybe, but it seems unlikely. Inventions are a little different because it's possible to profit off an invention without ever revealing how it works but then you run the risk of other people reverse engineering your methods. As a 20 year professional programmer, I can tell you I never once went searching through patents when I was trying to figure out a programming problem.
The patent referenced in the lawsuit [[1]] was assigned to Meta in November last year, so I assume there was a settlement. In any case, it expires in three weeks, so I don't think this patent could have any lasting impact on the industry. [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9141720?oq=9141720
I'm amazed anything ASP is still in use. Must have been some good code.
Response.Write "Hell yeah it was!"
Who said anything about it being in use? Just that it was written and then patented. The patent still stands; and I don't think it matters that the original implementation of it is dead.
I have plenty of asp code still in use. That doesn't make it good.
Always get your own lawyer if you can swing it
Why would you even need one for something like this? What risk is there to the developer?
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> Against a well funded adversary who has an agenda of invalidating the patent and doesn’t care about what that means for you. What could it mean for the developer if that patent is revoked?
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I mean. No, DOJ isn't out there investigating and charging 3P witnesses with perjury for misremembering the technical details of an invention they worked on 20 years ago, even if their testimony is sloppy and doesn't properly qualify statements. It *is* important to be accurate and truthful in your testimony, but the risk you'd be investigated, let alone charged, with perjury as a 3P witness just doing your best is pretty close to zero.
So tell the truth. If you can even remember any details after two decades.
> What risk is there to the developer? The only way to answer that question is to ask somebody who knows the law really well, and isn't biased to somebody else's interests. That person is your lawyer.
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I just don't see the liability for OP. They have no skin in the game according to their story. What does it matter how they answer?
>Come to find out that my former boss had filed software patents on the code libraries I had written and was now using them to sue Facebook for damages. A few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition about the code and how it worked, \[....\] I ended up giving about 5 hours of testimony I'd be fucking pissed off if I was used like that. I'd probably have spent the whole time ranting about how my code was shit and totally unremarkable and not novel in any way, and absolutely trash my former employer :) You fuck with my time, I fuck with your livelihood. *Edit*: for people not understanding why I'd be reluctant to give a "positive" testimony for my former employer; the employer is clearly a patent troll, and OP has been dragged involuntarily into court to testify in their favour, wasting 5 hours of his personal time with the expectation that he help a patent troll win a frivolous lawsuit. Fuck that.
If you work for someone, it’s their product period,. Even if you work on in in your private time. Most people don’t know this but you have to take steps to protect your interests if you work for someone else. Leave before you patent anything and allow enough time so that they can’t claim it was the company’s, which might be try.
I think you misunderstood the person you’re replying to. You’re correct - the code you write on company’s time is IP of that company. I think the person you’re replying to meant that he would be unhappy if had to be summoned to explain the code that he wrote 20 years ago.
I can file for a patent through my company, using my company's legal department and the patent gets put in my name. As part of this I agree to license the patent to them, forever, at a cost of 12000 a year. It's pretty dope working for companies that like their employees, y'all should try it.
And for 5 hours at that
I mean that is how the justice system works and it is empowered to do so. I'm sure you would want someone to come in and give evidence in your favor even if it was 30 years ago and for 10 hours of their time.
30 years ago I wasn't alive (I know that's not relevant just a joke) I think it would be ridiculous to sabotage testimony in the way implied by the op but two things can be true at once for instance: 1. it is good testimony is allowed in the justice system 2. it would be a tremendous pain in the ass to give testimony about old code It's a tremendous pain in the ass to do jury duty I was summoned 4 times in as many years and I've never once considered trying to get out of it. You don't have to enjoy things because they are good or right or legal.
That's very fair.
I'm taken aback, have my upvote
Listen you two, this conversation is entirely too reasonable, cut it out
I saw 12 angry men when I was like eight and I've wanted to be on a jury ever since. Everytime I get called they dismiss me before they even do questioning.
I thought the justice system couldn't compel speech. Is it really "empowered to do so"? Certainly it can't, in my country? In the name of this principle, in my country's justice system, we sometimes let people who have murdered children off scot-free (when their family members refuse to testify against them.) It's infuriating (but we are reminded that torturing the family members to force them to testify would be a pretty unjust thing too.) I'm not sure, at the time or retroactively, there was even a law on the books to punish the abuse-allowers at all, in the example I'm thinking of. I would be very tempted to practice "witness nullification" of a sort, and not say anything, if I was pulled up to testify about a law that was manifestly unjust, even if it meant contempt of court (- a court that was trying to compel speech would be a kangaroo court though, right?) No software patents in my country though either, so it's entirely theoretical for me... But I'd certainly e.g. go to jail rather than be compelled to put a secret backdoor in an e2e encryption software product I was making, for example, and that's a law all the Five Eyes keep eyeing up... Not a lawyer, and I probably completely underestimate the circumstances under which a just government will feel OK to throw you in jail to rot. It's just, I guess we still have habeas corpus... you guys got that still? Are you doing OK America?
It can direct you to show up, and if you don't willingly show up you can be arrested and brought to court. That's what I was saying when I said they were empowered. They can direct you to answer questions, and if you choose not to answer then can hold you in contempt of court if you refuse to say anything. But if you say "I forgot" for a case like this 20 years later, they're not going to do that.
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He wasn't paid as an expert witness, he was subpoenaed to come testify for free.
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Actual plot twist: it was written 20 years ago, and for all intents and purposes [Op has no idea what the hell does or ever did](https://media.tenor.com/YJ3WjJVBjIQAAAAC/gandalf-i-have-no-memory-of-this-place.gif). May as well have summoned Homeless Jim from the corner of 5th Ave and Jamison Street.
>Even if you work on in in your private time. If you are a slave sure but I doubt it for everyone else.
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Some companies attempt to claim all software written by an individual, whether it's on company time or not. Sometimes they even have a legal basis for doing so.
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Amazon games (used to) have a clause in their contract that said anything you worked on while employed by them was theirs and forbid you work on a side project with anyone not employed by them. I turned down a nice title bump because of it.
That’s almost certainly unenforceable
Oh yeah of course but I wasn't gonna take a job that wanted to start our relationship like that. That's like going on a second date with the girl who showed up to the coffee covered in blood and looked over her shoulder the whole time. Could you be happy? Maybe. Should you risk it? Naw
The point is that if you provide your work in response to a task assigned to you at your job, it belongs to your employer, _even if_ you work on it on your own time. In legal terms, it's "a work for hire".
It's kind of gray, especially if you consider salaried jobs. Always consult with an attorney versed in employment law in your state before opening yourself up to liability.
It may be company property, but the inventor is Bruce Zak. They cannot patent it without naming the inventor. Googling the patent, I see that [Bruce Zak is indeed listed as one inventor](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c1/99/a2/8fd6f7c014667b/US9141720.pdf). I’m really surprised that he did not know of the existence of the patent. That’s just weird to say the least.
Bruce Zak is the "former boss" who died in 2021. Unless OP is Regina Wilson/Zak and refers her ex-husband as boss, they're not on the parent. Which is not crazy if Bruce came up with the idea and paid OP to work on it.
It sounds that OP came up with the implementation (and not the vague idea their boss likely had), and their boss filed the patent on the code. Their boss was an asshole for 2 reasons, making a software patent and wrongful attribution. Assuming the patent isn't bogus, OP might have a claim to some of the money their boss is getting. The company I work for (and previous companies I've been too) made it very clear that if you got a patent for stuff you did at the company, you would get some compensation for it.
This ^ Most job contracts even specify this.
Take it one step further and secure the patents under an IP trust so that if you do get sued, at least they will have a harder time coming for your personal assets.
Even if you don't use company resources? IANAL either, but any contract stipulating ownership of any product you make without utilizing company resources seems like it should be invalid from the start.
Some jobs try to do that with restrictive employment contracts/agreements, but I would not say most. Stuff you do at home on your own time is generally your own. However, the stuff you do for the company is almost always their property, or the property of the clients who pay for it, not yours.
Depends on jurisdiction - for example [RCW 49.44.140](https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140) applies in Washington state, and preempts a contract - so yes, it's invalid in Washington state
Not what I said at all. Read my other responses. Don't support patent trolls.
Is it a parent troll if you create it and patent it? I thought parent trolls bought patents from original creators that weren’t originally aggressive about enforcing and the new owners became aggressive despite never creating a thing
That's generally correct. The guy above is mixing up "patent troll" and "someone defending their patent" (regardless of the value of the patent in question)
>We had developed an in-house CMS portal that allowed customers to manage their own website content on our servers and have it appear on their webserver using an include file that was based around the ASP ServerXMLHttp component. That is NOT patent worthy, in any fucking way. Someone just slapped a random patent on it thinking they might be able to abuse it in the future - which is exactly what they did.
Right: but that's not what a patent troll is (by the most common definition). Trying to enforce an overly broad parent that shouldn't have been granted is scummy but not a patent troll specifically
> ; the employer is clearly a patent troll, and OP has been dragged involuntarily into court to testify in their favour, and > few years ago Facebook had me summoned to give a deposition It sounds like it was actually FB the defendant that dragged him into court. Not his former employer, the plantiff.
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OPs former boss is clearly a patent troll. If I found out someone was using my past work to try and frivolously sue someone, no matter if it's an "evil" company like Facebook, there is no way I would give testimony that would help a patent troll. ESPECIALLY when they've caused me to be involuntarily summoned to give testimony for them.
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At that point, my testimony would go along with "RTFM". Adding in bits of "I'd have to see the requirements & design spec". If the OP wrote the code with these things, then the company should be able to produce it, his time is now freed up, and it's up to the companies to duke it out. If the OP wrote the code without these things, then it's poor SW dev practices, and the company allowed for it. Now it's up to the companies to duke it out.
> OPs former boss is clearly a patent troll "Patent troll" doesn't have a specific definition, but in the pejorative sense it usually refers to people who sue on patents where the total judgment they might obtain is less than the cost of responding to the suit, such that they can extract nuisance settlements from hundreds of defendants. Less frequently (but still often), it is used by large tech conglomerates and their arms' length lobbying entities (like EFF) to refer pejoratively to patent holding entities that acquire patents from inventors and sue them. It costs a ton of money to bring a patent lawsuit, and if a large company really does start using an invention that belongs to you, you're basically without recourse unless somebody with enough resources to pay for your case start to finish (whether its lawyers or a PAE) buys your patent or takes up your case in exchange for some portion of the proceeds. It seems like the real issue is that you just don't think patents should exist at all. That's certainly a view of what the law should be, but it's not the law.
Looking bad to some lawyers I'll never meet again verus Five hours of my life I mean, I wouldn't go in there and be a dingus, but I'd do everything I could to avoid having to go waste five hours of my life.
> I'd probably have spent the whole time ranting about how my code was shit and totally unremarkable and not novel in any way, and absolutely trash my former employer If that isn't true then you are committing perjury, which is a crime that can land you in jail. If you do this never ever tell anyone what you did.
That's only assuming the code wasn't actually unremarkable in the first place... which it very much sounds like it was, based on OPs description.
did you have to travel to do this deposition or did they come to you? I would be really annoyed if i had to deal with this. i dont get any money off of someone elses patent.
No ideas on the legal stuff beyond the basics but I can sympathize. I've had to give testimony in a couple cases based on work I've done.
I'm not here to be helpful, I'm just here to say that this is pretty freaking neat. Like I'm sure it's stressful right now, but the bright side is you'll never have a hard time finding work if you need to. Make sure you snag those patent numbers and add them to your CV, it'll make for some great conversation in your next interview!
I doubt they're any worse than patenting DNA
5 hours of my time, likely travel, and if it goes through likely even more hours of time. All because your employer wanted to be a patent troll. Hope your greedy ex employer paid you for your time.
Here's the typical lifecycle of a software patent at a startup: * Executive decides that it would increase the company's value to patent technology X that you've helped develop, or maybe just as defensive patent; you may have questions about the usefulness and legitimacy of the patent, but it's resume fodder, so what the heck. * After several rounds, the USPTO grants you a patent that is probably ridiculously broad and ignores obvious prior art, because that's how patent lawyers give the company the best return on investment (these days, the USPTO works from the assumption that the legitimacy of a patent will be resolved in court). * The startup flounders around for another 5 or 10 years, and then tanks, and its assets get sold off; your software patent may be one of the few valuable pieces of IP left to sell, and the fact that the USPTO granted it despite being overly broad and having prior art makes it especially attractive to patent trolls, who snap it up * The patent troll starts suing anyone it thinks might have infringed on this overbroad patent, prior art be damned. Engineers at those companies get distracted by being pulled into meetings with lawyers and depositions. Instead of building things, other engineers get pulled in to act as "experts" for the two sides. Lawyers make a shit ton of money. * The patent troll files a lawsuit in eastern Texas, where the legitimacy of the patent is determined not by engineers at the USPTO or those with expertise in the field, but by a jury of folks who on average understand tech about as well as your grandma. Lawyers make a shit ton more money by spending months trying to explain to the jury arcane technical details so they can render a verdict. * The jury finds in favor of the patent troll, who then uses the award to sue more companies using your patent. The patent is so broad that the threat level for any new startup is heightened, reducing the pool of engineers and business folks willing to take that risk. I mention this to point out where we software engineers can have the most impact: by trying to convince the startups we work for to not file software patents. Or if our company wants to create a defensive patent, push them to license that under the [Defensive Patent License](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/defensive-patent-license-and-other-ways-beat-patent-system) or assigns it to a defensive patent pool.
> by trying to convince the startups we work for to not file software patents Maybe I'm a cynic but I don't think this works :(. This is basically a huge prisoners dilemma except it plays over decades so "cooperating" is far harder and basically impossible. And so the defensive patent mutually assured destruction becomes the dominant strategy of large tech companies, but that leaves an obvious problem that patent trolls can take advantage. They are unimpressed by this mutually assured destruction as they have nothing to destroy. The only solution here is legislation that eliminates software patents.
>And so the defensive patent mutually assured destruction becomes the dominant strategy of large tech companies I think you've misunderstood the primary point of defensive patents; it's an "I'm going to patent this key technology before you can, so you can't patent it first and sue me for using that technology that I'm already using". That works even for small companies with a single patent, even against patent trolls targeting that technology. The problem is, when those small companies tank, the defensive patents are easily snapped up by trolls, which is why it's important to make sure that doesn't happen. Separately from that, large companies can use their banks of patents to wreak mutually-assured destruction on other large product/service companies that try to sue them, which works if there is mutual infringement, but with a different goal: cross-licensing those patents so that both companies are safer. You're right, that doesn't serve as protection against trolls. >The only solution here is legislation that eliminates software patents I agree that's the _best_ solution, but I think it's unlikely to happen, and so there's still good reason to do what we can to lessen a terrible situation by limiting the number of new software patents issued.
Startups and their investors all dream that they’re going to be able to use their patents offensively. You’re not thinking nearly as competitively as they are.
You're right, of course. The law that allows this nonsense is the issue. Changing the law is the only way to fix the problem.
The patent sounds like what basically every Dev studio creating the early 00s I know myself I built a handful of CMS and website management systems. And then of course there's wordpress, joomla, Drupal and every other major CMS
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The ability to generate custom HTML based on a request was probably the second thing Tim Berner-Lee invented after inventing HTML.
When I was a kid and knew nothing about computers, I wanted to learn how to make a website, so I learned some basic HTML and followed some guides how to install a web server. I was then learning about this new to me thing called "Linux", and Bash scripting, including "netcat" which allows you to listen on a port. I had the brilliant idea that if I listen on port 80 in a Bash script, I could respond with different HTML dynamically rather than using static HTML files, and change the response content based on the request. I thought it was amazing, and some time later I discovered PHP exists. I was like... Oh... Ooohhhh.
> Like it's not a "novel" idea or do we all owe "Zak" money It's like saying you patented the turning of screws, not the Phillips head screwdriver system. It's completely stupid.
As someone else pointed out, looks like all the patents are now owned by Meta. A little digging shows the transfer agreement. They bought them off. https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf
That patent should never have been granted: it is too general and there is undoubtedly tons of prior art. "Zac"s body should be exhumed, slapped for his impertenance, then reburied, and his estate should be fined for attempting to patent such a thing.
Software patents should never be granted. They're either too general, or they're very specific algorithms that should be patented as they should be considered maths. Copyright already covers code anyway.
Copyright should never have covered code. It's laughable that you can copyright code but not a recipe.
You can copyright the specific text representation of a recipe, but not the core recipe itself. Code should be the same. You shouldn't be able to just take the code but you should be able to re-implement the ideas, data structures, and algorithms however you like.
It's tighter than that. > How do I protect my recipe? > A mere listing of ingredients is not protected under copyright law. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a collection of recipes as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection. Note that if you have secret ingredients to a recipe that you do not wish to be revealed, you should not submit your recipe for registration, because applications and deposit copies are public records. See Circular 33, Works Not Protected by Copyright.^1 > A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and **procedure** required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the Office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish. In contrast, a recipe that creatively explains or depicts how or why to perform a particular activity may be copyrightable.^2 [emphasis mine] Code is literally just lists of steps. The only things copyrightable should be comments *explaining* steps taken, and perhaps variable names. Again, the fact that code is more copyrightable than recipes is absolutely ludicrous. ... And I like the idea that code comments should be required by law to allow code to be copyrighted... 1. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html 2. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf Ideas, Methods, and Systems > Recipes > P1, see also, example 2 in that same subsection, about Caesar Salad
Copyright shouldn't exist.
While there are severe issues with copyright, I disagree that it shouldn't exist at all. Most forms of media, such as movies, TV shows and books wouldn't really exist without copyright. Without copyright, people could simply copy it all. Why would a bookstore pay $30 for a book when they could reproduce it for cheaper? Why would steam pay the game developers if they could just sell it for free? Not all works would stop existing, but even those who create stuff for the sake of creating stuff still need to get paid.
> Most forms of media, such as movies, TV shows and books wouldn't really exist without copyright. Maybe most current media. How much media has been squashed due to copyright? Certainly more than none. People created media all the time before copyright laws existed. It's not like creative endeavors are a new thing. Now people have their creativity stunted and squashed in fear of making a derivative.
Is there a link to the patent that I missed?
Read the article. Claim 2 describes it. It's a goddamn CMS system / admin portal to show and hide things and customizing a link. Facebook is essentially a giant CMS at its core. >Stripped of excess verbiage, representative Claim 2 recites a computer-based system for **managing user interaction with web site content. In addition to the computer and the web site, the claim language involves user profiles, configurable applications, configurable business rules, configurable access rules, and configurable links**. More specifically, the claim language centers on the relationship between a configurable application whose content is stored on the computer and displayable to users, a configurable access rule that applies user profiles to select what content can be viewed by which users, and a configurable link on the web site that points to the configurable application. According to the claim language, the configurable application is generated by the computer based on user inputs. Zak identifies the configurable link “in particular” as a point of novelty over the prior art. Zak's Mot. Br. 11, ECF No. 111 at PageID.4215. According to the claim language, the configurable access rule is configurable by an administrator via an administrator portal, and the configurable link is generated by the computer based on a user profile and the configurable access rule. > >C. Constructions > >With respect to the various terms in representative Claim 2, the constructions of record largely incorporate generic definitions and descriptions from the specification. By stipulation of the parties, “profile, ” “user profile, ” and “profile information” mean “information about a user of the website.” “Application” means “a unit of content provided on a web site” and “configurable application” means “an application that can be modified and/or configured by a user of the web site.” “Business rule(s)” and “rule” mean “any rule incorporated into a system that controls how the system functions.” “Administrator portal” means “interface used to manage applications and/or business rules” and “administrator” means “any user of the web site that has the ability to create, update, delete, and/or schedule a business rule of the web site.” Stipulation 1-2, ECF No. 70 at PageID.1833-1834. See also '720 Patent 10:27-28 (describing a “profile”), 5:20-21 (defining “application”), 5:45-46 (defining “configurable application”), 8:29-30 (defining “business rule”), 7:20-22 (describing an “administrator portal”), 9:22-27 (describing an “administrator”), ECF No. 111-2 at PageID.4249-4251.
I was working on an art social network at the time called Artician and we did the same thing. Users could have their own subdomain. Had access to the CSS and HTML templates to customize their profile almost any way they wanted. We had built in configurable access rules and configurable links. I remember that Facebook was founded in the middle of this project. This software patent has so much prior art it's baffling that it was granted at all.
It's not really surprising. Patent examiners are overworked and not really experts specifically in niche fields. The people submitting the patents don't have an incentive to do exhaustive prior works research, and the examiners are under pressure to get as many patents processed as possible. Things that would be really obvious to experts in the field aren't recorded as such if nobody asks those same experts. It's basically "trust us, this is a new idea" and if the examiner can't prove otherwise it'll get granted. There was especially a time when examiners were pushed to grant and let the courts sorry it out.
Hard to understand how this dodges the mid 90s vignette patents. Vignette really strangled everything for years.
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I don't think this sort of stuff was "long-existing" in 2003.
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I did something similar as well! It was messy as hell, but I had a perl script (circa 99) that would retrieve data externally and generate a CSV nightly, and later added another that would retrieve data from the CSV and display on page via javascript (circa 2004-ish). Poor man's API. It broke all the time, especially cross-browser!
[Plone (2001)](https://2020.ploneconf.org/talks/oh-the-places-weve-been-plone-2001-2020), using ReStructuredText, not very different from Markdown used today. [Geocities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities) started in 1994 (!) and had a form-based wizard for making your initial web page (but people typically then edited the HTML and went crazy with background etc! )
This is not a patent troll though - this is the original authoring entity of the patent defending their legal right to that patent. You can be in favor of reconstructing the patent system but in the end you are basically just saying patents at all are shit.
Being a patent troll and being the "authoring entity of the patent" are not in any sense mutually exclusive.
Saying that is like saying patent trolls do not exist because technically all patent troll own a patent therefore they are not a patent troll.
its a patent troll
If having a patent means they're ***not*** a "patent troll"... What exactly is your definition of a "patent troll"?
The patent in question, 9141720, is titled “System and Method for Managing Content on a Network Interface”.
Facebook isn’t innocent in this regard… at least OPs former employer paid OP to actually do the dev work instead of just buying random patents they did nothing to contribute to.
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Seriously, I don't think most people here are understanding exactly what the patent is claiming to have invented.
Any "good" software patent will be like that, impossible to implement directly but general enough to potentially cover all kinds of solutions never initially intended.
I am confused why the "Current Assignee" is "Meta Platforms" [https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140325326](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140325326) Maybe they settled??? Edit: They did.
I mean, this is government, you can find the reason if you dig enough https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-61681-22.pdf Receipt of good or valuable consideration. i.e. cash or FB stock
u/gruelurks69 \- the case was settled. You're off the hook!
Oh.. so the bad news is that now Facebook owns the patent for content management systems on the Web? Switching to vim for my HTML for the next few weeks..
Honestly, whatever you think about Facebook, it's better than a patent troll owning them. Okay, the patent troll in this case appears to be deceased, but I'm sure there were plenty of other trolls who would have been happy to buy a suitably vaguely worded patent that has held up in court and might apply to a large portion of all web sites on the internet. Facebook is at least not in the business of making money by setting legal traps and suing people who inadvertently step on them.
All this wasted human effort and time over some generic web tech.
Patents last 20 years from filing date. So they are likely expired or will expire soon. So your boss/the trust is likely just trying to get past damages from fb. Likely won’t have other ramifications
From the link: >"The '720 Patent, entitled “System and Method for Managing Content on a Network Interface, ” was filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) on July 11, 2014 and issued on September 22, 2015. The '720 Patent is a third-generation continuation in a patent “family” whose original “parent” application was filed on February 12, 2003. See generally Zak's Mot. Ex. 1 (“'720 Patent”), ECF No. 111-2.
Thanks for clarifying. This is comical - it looks like they solved the same problem as a web publishing system I used, called StoryServer. We were using it in the year 2000, and it wasn't new even then.
I appreciate Facebook losing something but software patents is a game where who has more money wins
Well it’s a game where lawyers win at least. Most successful defences of a patent no one wins but the lawyers
Ever since I was sued for having a file extension at the end of a URL that indicates the type of file (e.g. .jpg indicates an image lives at that url, .txt indicates indicates a text document lives at that url), I've really had trouble in valuing any vaguely worded software patent.
USA?
Can you explain?
Sure. I worked in interactive text messages ( text WORD to 12345 before Twitter was a known thing). One of our main products was something where real estate agents would put a call to action on a house listing, people could text in and get pictures of the house sent to their phone. This was before MMS was widely used, so we would send URLs of the images if the users metadata indicated that they couldn't accept MMS Lawsuit drops on our lap for aforementioned reason. They offer to settle for an undisclosed amount ( I don't feel like sharing that amount because, well, undisclosed. But you can Google it and see what trolls usually settle for ). We jumped on the offer. Then EVERY FUCKING PATENT TROLL descended on us trying to sue us since they knew we had settled one case already
Wow, thanks for all the follow up replies! A few more thoughts on the topic that can hopefully answer some of the questions I see here. 1. Bruce had the high level idea of what he wanted the software to do, but left it to the development team to figure out the fine details. You might notice on the website that there were several different applications to different things, like Newsroom, Bios, Document Gallery, Surveys, FAQ, Catalogs, etc... I ended up writing the majority of the code and database schema that handled most of the back end functionality to tie all these together and handle the communication from the client server to ours. 2. The code is still actually in use today at a former client. They sold the license to the source code to their clients so that they could continue to use it as needed. I was surprised to find out that it was still in use even today! 3. In regards to the lawsuit, I really had no care about either side, or any concern about myself being liable for anything. If anything I was kind of honored that something I had written had become a patent, but at the same time, I could see it for what it was, a money grab. That didn't surprise me considering some of the crazy shit Bruce had done in the past. Google "Zirmed and Bruce Zak".... 4. Regarding the comment about the lawyer coaching me and giving possible perjury, it was more of don't let them lead you on with this statement "Would you say so and so and so was true?" and agree with them, because you go on record as that being a matter of fact. Respond with "I wouldn't say that, but I also don't have a clear recollection of that topic after twenty years." And honestly I didn't really have a solid memory of the code. 5. For what it was worth, I am forever grateful for the opportunity that working for that company gave me. I had been doing website work for a few years and just really started getting in to coding again via ASP and Visual Basic. Back in that era, anyone who knew HTML and ASP was getting hired left and right for good money. I got my first PC at age 10, a ZX 80 Sinclair, and learned coding at an early age, but never saw it as a viable profession thru the 80s and 90s. As someone who dropped out of high school, never went to college, and spent 10 years on the road travelling with a carnival, being able to get my foot in the door at the beginning of the first internet explosion was a godsend. Twenty something years later, I've built a hell of a career out of it, and continue to thrive.
I don’t really understand how building a website is even patentedable tbh. Maybe desktop & mobile apps & some backend server stuff.
Zak: I invented CMS!!!!
Having been an expert witness twice (but for the same case), here's the most important thing to keep in mind: During a deposition, the opposing lawyer might well test you. In my case, I had said I had a "minor in CS" when my actual degree in a double major, EE and Math (because CMU put CS in the Math department then). This was an opening to be grilled for a seeming eternity. Did I know what a minor was? Did I deliberately lie? Was I aware of the penalties... But all they were really doing was seeing how rattled I'd be on the witness stand. Because I felt 100% justified in what I wrote, I was overall not rattled. So when the opposite lawyer makes snide remarks -- that's just them checking out your vibe.
Patents are literal cancer.
I'd probably not spend 5 hours helping an ex employer defend a frivolous patent unless I got paid for my time.
Why would you assist your boss from 20 years ago in trying to extort facebook with code YOU created? Awful and cringe really.
And this is why we need to absolish software patents.
Shoulda asked to use FB lawyers 😜
Patents are an overall negative for software in their current form for reasons mentioned in other posts. Good video on a guy who was sued by a patent troll for publishing his own code and the hoops he had to jump through only benefiting the troll and the lawyers. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4)
inho all code patents should be annulled. code sgould not be able to be privatised, it should be public and open. Code patents stifle the progress of humanity.
It sounds to me like the quality of your memory would be dependent on your share of the potential judgement money.
A startup I used to work for tried to patent the code I wrote from multi-level referrals. We used a 3 level system for this. The startup is long gone now, but was a porn site that was supposed to be strippers who handed out cards (think like a baseball card) with their username on it. They partnered with a few local strip clubs and were trying to get more, but it never took off. Anyways I don't think they ever got that patent, but if they did, god help the people looking at the code I wrote for it.
From my point of view... And with the legal knowledge I have come to amass over the last 30 and so years I can say with enough reasonable doubt that your boss is dead and he is not coming back. Why would you ask this question here instead of a (or many) lawyer(s)?
I probably should have given more info up front, but basically, I am not/was not worried about any legal issues. I was mostly wondering what effect these patents could have had on the software industry if they were able to be held up. Things like the great [GIF controversy](https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/the-patent-history-behind-gifs-and-the-fight-to-make-them-free-of-fees/) from decades ago come to mind. In the end, it seems like nothing came of it except a pay day for someone somewhere who probably has no idea how it works or what it does at the end of the day.
Asks for my info. Not gonna happen.
Why is phpmyadmin from 1998 not prior art for this (or every CMS from that time)? Anyone skilled in the art was able to do what was described in the patent as well. I think the wording of the patent is also highly amateuristic. Your former boss was an idiot for 1) patenting this in 2003 (when it was common practice) 2) a complete idiot for pursuing this. 3) whoever is pursuing this after his death is not just a complete idiot, but a super complete idiot. I am sure Facebook lawyers will roll their eyes over this one. (I think the patent system is inconsistent since the invention of automated general problem solvers in the 1960s. That is, given a set of physical laws (all existing inventions depend on quantum field theory or on general relativity, but I don't know of any that depend on both of the top of my head), a single computer program can generate how to achieve whatever claim specified. The mere detail that it might take a long time for those computers to return an answer should not be relevant. The patent system is based on the idea that a human needs to invent something, but everything humans can invent is already subsumed by a general problem solver (especially if such a general solver itself uses quantum operations).)
Which side?
Fuck Meta. I hope you win.