back to article Brains behind Kazaa and Morpheus unleash patent storm

Level3 has joined with Personalweb Technologies to lay complaints against another lengthy list of Internet companies. The defendant list can be seen at the Texas Lawyer blog, and includes Yahoo!, Rackspace, Nexsan Technologies, Apple, IBM, Facebook, and Microsoft. Personalweb has previously filed complaints against Amazon, …

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Devil

    Here we go for another serving

    Most obvious shite with more previous art than one can carry in a shopping bag put on paper and rubberstamped by the patent office, ifanbois jumping to the defense, people who are of the opinion that patents are important to defend the starving inventor and to give value to "intellectual property", RICO claiming that WIndows is bugfree etc...

  2. tom dial Silver badge
    Flame

    Disgusting

    I do not have the stomach right now even to read the patents. Their titles alone make me want to throw up.

    I concluded long ago that no competent programmer could work for as much as a day without inadvertently infringing one or more patents.

    1. Blain Hamon
      Facepalm

      Re: Disgusting

      You could probably wager a beer or two that someone's already patented HelloWorld. Sorry, 'means to indicate successful program design, functioning, and/or invocation via display of text.'

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Disgusting

        'means to indicate successful program design, functioning, and/or invocation via display of text.'

        Cue Apple.....

        'means to indicate successful program design, functioning, and/or invocation via display of text *on a phone*'

    2. Thorne

      Re: Disgusting

      One of the patent was splitting data based on a delimited in the data. Even a useless programmer can't go twenty minutes without braking that one.

      Really if you look at it all language breaks that patent. Spoken words have a pause between words. The conversation is the data and the pause is the delimited. Written words use space and new line.

      Everyonefromnowoneneedstocommunicatewithoutdemilitersotherwiseyouhavejustbrokentheirpatentandwillgetsued

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Actually, (spoken word)

        There isn't much of a pause between one spoken word and the next unless you're trying to get Microsoft Windows speech recognition to work. Then, you, talk, like, this. Go, on, try, it, it, works, comma, eventually, period. It's, a, matter, of, formatcy. (heh heh heh heh)

      2. Nigel 11
        Mushroom

        Re: Disgusting

        The prior art for that one is milennia old!

        The ancients used to write with no spaces between their words. Then they started to insert dots. Finally they hit on the idea of using spaces.

        As for computer prior art, awk and its split() function is a relatively recent example!

  3. Criminny Rickets
    Devil

    It would be Ironic if...

    they could get their hands on a patent that covers translating music from the original recorded format to CD, then charge the RIAA $2000.00 for every CD ever sold!!!

    1. beep54
      Meh

      Re: It would be Ironic if...

      Sweet! But considering who owns this game, we already know how that will pan out.

      1. Dazed and Confused

        Re: we already know how that will pan out.

        Yepp,

        rich lawyers will get richer

        the rest of us will pay one way or another.

        Welcome to the post civilised world, where any software house needs to employ more patent lawyers than programmers. I wonder when someone will find a way of offshoring this stuff.

    2. Oddb0d

      Scorpions in my vagina?!?

      Actually it would fit the modus operandi of these colourful characters almost perfectly. Kevin Bermeister already tried suing the RIAA using one of the same patents back in '04...

      http://news.cnet.com/P2P%20company%20sues%20RIAA%20over%20patent/2100-1027_3-5357332.html

      ...and when that didn't pan out, Altnet went after Streamcast...

      http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1264

      ...now they're BFFs, this must be a textbook definition of patently absurd.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Prior Art Anyone?

    ... Just start digging around all those Academic P2P papers from the 80's & 90's.

  5. Steven Roper
    Facepalm

    It certainly seems a bit rich

    for the makers of Kazaa and Morpheus to be complaining about violations of their intellectual property, considering the reasons those programs became widely used in the first place.

    Not only greedy, but hypocritical to boot. Fucking oxygen thieves, the lot of them.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: It certainly seems a bit rich

      Many fighting styles have techniques aimed at using the other fellow's strength to hurt himself. It may well be easier to hasten the demise of the existing patent/lawsuit system mess by making it implode, rather than just railing against it from the sidelines.

      1. Paul_Murphy

        Re: It certainly seems a bit rich

        You should patent that idea.

        And maybe I should patent the idea of supporting others.. err sorry 'describes a method by which innovation efforts can be directed to the most cost-effective use scenario' or something.

        ttfn

        1. dlc.usa
          Boffin

          Re: It certainly seems a bit rich

          How about unearthing a patent covering patent application infrastructure and methodologies?

  6. Ellis Birt 1
    FAIL

    There will only be two groups of winners...

    ... both in the legal profession!

    The US patent system is broken beyond repair, with prior art (I'm sure I learned about hash tables in the 1980s), and the blatantly obvious being rubber-stamped as a matter of course.

    You might think that the lawyers created the problem deliberately!

    1. Dazed and Confused

      Re: I'm sure I learned about hash tables in the 1980s

      The 4BSD kernel used them.

  7. The FunkeyGibbon
    Devil

    If legal systems could mate...

    What kind of unholy beast would be created by the coming together of two of the worst ever coming together, the demons that are the US Patent System and the Liable Laws from the UK....

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: If legal systems could mate...

      OK, you meant "libel laws", but actually ... "liable laws" sound like the unholy beast you were asking about: everything you do (patent) or say (libel) leaves you liable.

      1. loopy lou

        Re: If legal systems could mate...

        Mix in the inlaws and you've really got something.

  8. Callam McMillan

    I'm not sure this article is actually correct? From what I've read about it on other sites, Level3 is only listed in the suits because they are on the patents as a co-owner, yet they have nothing to do with the lawsuits.

    As for the logic of pursuing all these big name players, they must feel they have something solid, because taking just Apple, IBM, Facebook, and Microsoft, if you combined their lawyers and legal budgets, you would be able to rival most small countries!

    1. MacroRodent
      Mushroom

      Don't mess with IBM...

      >they must feel they have something solid

      Feeling you have something solid is not enough for going against IBM. Just ask the guys who ran SCO to the ground believing they can tax every Linux user, and in the process made the fatal mistake of annoying IBM... (I believe their flimsy case would have unravelled anyway, but IBM's involvement hastened it).

      1. dlc.usa
        Boffin

        Re: Don't mess with IBM...

        Indeed, SCO should be most grateful IBM never got their day in court. Instead, they got off relatively easily.

  9. Paul Smith

    "they must feel they have something solid"

    Callam McMillan @ 09:21 said "...As for the logic of pursuing all these big name players, they must feel they have something solid... ".

    They don't need anything solid, they just need something that is expensive to defend against. Prior art has no meaning after the patent has been granted. When challenged with a patent suit like this, a company really only has three options:

    1) pay someone else to continue to doing what you do

    2) pay to change what you do and pay the penalty of having done it 'wrong'

    3) pay to try and prove that the USPO was wrong to grant the patent in the first place, and all subsequent judgements that the patent is valid were also wrong.

    The extortionists rely on the fact that option one is almost always the cheapest, and remember, if any one of your victims decides that it is cheaper to go with option one, then that is considered evidence that the case is valid and makeing option 3 even more expensive.

    If you were curoius why so little that is new or innovative has come out of the US in the last 20 years, now you know.

  10. adam payne

    Oh the irony!

  11. launcap Silver badge
    Devil

    Interesting..

    .. that there a big moves in the US to (in essence) replicate the system here where a losing litigant pays the other sides costs. That would cut the patent trolls cases down to a handful since they would be liable for big bills if they lose (rather the current situation where a patent troll has very small costs vs the targets very large costs).

    Of course, they'd then just declare Chapter 11 (hence vacating the judgement), transfer the assets to a new under-bridge-dweller co and rinse, repeat..

  12. Reg Varney
    Flame

    This plague of spurious patents will only be solved when the defendants realise that it is a bloody sight cheaper (and more satisfying) to just pay for the assassination of the litigants, their lawyers and every half-wit patent office reviewer who was ever involved in the original patent than it is to spend 5 years in court defending them.

    1. btrower

      Setting up a fund?

      "... more satisfying) to just pay for the assassination of the litigants, their lawyers and every half-wit patent office reviewer who was ever involved in the original patent ..."

      tempting me to set up a fund ...

  13. joejack
    FAIL

    ...because without the promise of patent protection, Kazaa would never have been invented?

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