Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[brian]

Dan Hollis <goemon@anime.net> wrote:

>Did you ignore it or did you pay up? 
>FWIW I recall there was prior art dating back to 1974 at the very least...

Here is editing version of some correspondence that answers your question.

> > >  > US Patent #4,197,590 held by NuGraphics, Inc.

> >On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 09:20:34PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> > > The patent was for using the technique of using XOR for dragging/moving
> > > parts of a graphics image without erasing other parts.  Also, since the
> > > patent was granted in 1980, the inventors have had their 17 years of 

Brian Litzinger wrote:

> >In 1984 I received a demand letter for $10,000 from a company,
> >representing itself as the owner of the patent discuss above, as a
> >unlimited license for use of the patent and another patent.  At the
> >time I ran a company that made graphics cards for IBM PCs.

On Sat, Feb 17, 2001 at 01:59:59PM -0500, David Relson wrote:
> Ouch!  What did you do?

While I was President, the company was large enough that I can't
be certain of the details.

I do recall that I railed against the company.  I had actually met the
people at the company making the demand some years earlier.  I went on
and on about the same things you see today about patents and copyrights.

Our graphics platform had support for both XOR and save under cursors. 

I believe we did the following:

   made 'save under cursor' the default

   argued that since NEC made the graphics chips (7220A), which included
      the XOR function, that NEC rightly was the target of their
      demands, and that we would be a licensee as a part of having paid
      for the chip which included the technology.

The other patent that was represented that they held had to do with the
movement of bits from a memory storage device to an memory device that
was mapped to a display.

    We argued mountains of prior art

My instructions where that we were not to pay.  We might have paid though.
Not only might someone in the legal department have authorized the
payment, but someone within the company was embezzling money at the time,
so they might have sneaked out $10K under the guise of paying the
demand.

About a year later I was talking with a group of business owners who had
also received a similar demand letter.  Some paid, some didn't.  Those
who didn't pay were not pursued other than the occasional copy of the
demand letter.

Since that time, about 1986, I learned that there is a whole cottage
industry of going through old, but not too old, patents and seeing how
they can be misconstrued to apply to current technology, buying the
patent for cheap, and then threatening "infringers".  More or less
an extortion racket.  Generally the license fee demanded is low enough
that is more cost effective, in the short term, to pay.   And with
shareholder lawsuits the way they are, short term thinking
is the only thinking shareholders accept, and the extortionists
know it.

-- 
Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>

    Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>

    Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved

Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Dan Hollis]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> About a year later I was talking with a group of business owners who had
> also received a similar demand letter.  Some paid, some didn't.  Those
> who didn't pay were not pursued other than the occasional copy of the
> demand letter.

Probably they did not pursue because they knew their patent was invalid,
and if they did fight they would probably be found guilty of bad faith
patent enforcement - treble damages, the whole bit. And maybe criminal
fraud, if they had collected enough money under the bad patent.

The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.

> Since that time, about 1986, I learned that there is a whole cottage
> industry of going through old, but not too old, patents and seeing how
> they can be misconstrued to apply to current technology, buying the
> patent for cheap, and then threatening "infringers".  More or less
> an extortion racket.

RICO statutes anyone?

-Dan

Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Aaron Tiensivu]

| Since that time, about 1986, I learned that there is a whole cottage
| industry of going through old, but not too old, patents and seeing how
| they can be misconstrued to apply to current technology, buying the
| patent for cheap, and then threatening "infringers".  More or less
| an extortion racket.  Generally the license fee demanded is low enough
| that is more cost effective, in the short term, to pay.   And with
| shareholder lawsuits the way they are, short term thinking
| is the only thinking shareholders accept, and the extortionists
| know it.

Those of them that didn't end up in jail went on to form RAMBUS in the 90s.

Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Aaron Tiensivu]

| Since that time, about 1986, I learned that there is a whole cottage
| industry of going through old, but not too old, patents and seeing how
| they can be misconstrued to apply to current technology, buying the
| patent for cheap, and then threatening "infringers".  More or less
| an extortion racket.  Generally the license fee demanded is low enough
| that is more cost effective, in the short term, to pay.   And with
| shareholder lawsuits the way they are, short term thinking
| is the only thinking shareholders accept, and the extortionists
| know it.

Those of them that didn't end up in jail went on to form RAMBUS in the 90s.

Re: Money stifles innovation [was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[brian]

> On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> > About a year later I was talking with a group of business owners who had
> > also received a similar demand letter.  Some paid, some didn't.  Those
> > who didn't pay were not pursued other than the occasional copy of the
> > demand letter.

On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:57:14AM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
> embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.

As a person with a some decades of experience with patents and
trademarks, and playing among the various sides, I can state
quite unequivocally that the problem is money.

Courts, or rights, can simply be bought with enough money.  And not
necessarily in the way you would think.

Here is a recent and true example:

I owned the domain DemandTV.com, and had applied for a trademark.

DirecTV, or DirectV, the satellite people, and subsidiary of Hughes
Aerospace, contested my trademark application calling it 'confusingly
similar'.

Of course its not confusing similar as trademarks go.  They started
by subpoena'ing anyone that could find related to the trademark.
Hours and hours of questions over multiple days.

My own lawyers, a well respected big name law firm, said they really had
no standing whatsoever and for a measly 1/2 million dollars we'd get
the trademark through the PTO process.

However, that is not the end.  Even though the PTO would have blessed
our trademark of DemandTV, it would still be up to District Courts as
to decide whether we were infringing.  And that is individual district
courts all over the country.  Hughes/DirectV could file basically as
much as they want and we would be required to respond.

We could try to sue for injunctive relief, but we would never "win"
because we couldn't sustain the hemorrhage'ing of money.

So they problem is that they have money and you don't so they win.

Hughes was able to obtain the outcome they wanted simply because they
had more money.

Isn't that the golden rule? "He who has the gold makes the rules."

-- 
Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>

    Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved

Re: Money stifles innovation [was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Dan Hollis]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:57:14AM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
> > embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.
> As a person with a some decades of experience with patents and
> trademarks, and playing among the various sides, I can state
> quite unequivocally that the problem is money.

Actually the problem is lack of morals and bad people who are really evil
at the core (you wouldnt want them for your neighbor).

-Dan

Re: Money stifles innovation [was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[brian]

> > On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:57:14AM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > > The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
> > > embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.

> On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> > As a person with a some decades of experience with patents and
> > trademarks, and playing among the various sides, I can state
> > quite unequivocally that the problem is money.

On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 05:47:10PM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> Actually the problem is lack of morals and bad people who are really evil
> at the core (you wouldnt want them for your neighbor).

Many have heard the saying 'money is the root of all evil'.

The quote is in fact 'the pursuit of money is the root of all evil'.

Thanks go to Dan Hollis for reminding me of this.

-- 
Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>

    Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved

Re: Money stifles innovation [was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Neil Brown]

On Sunday February 18, brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> > > On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:57:14AM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > > > The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
> > > > embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.
> 
> > On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> > > As a person with a some decades of experience with patents and
> > > trademarks, and playing among the various sides, I can state
> > > quite unequivocally that the problem is money.
> 
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 05:47:10PM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > Actually the problem is lack of morals and bad people who are really evil
> > at the core (you wouldnt want them for your neighbor).
> 
> Many have heard the saying 'money is the root of all evil'.
> 
> The quote is in fact 'the pursuit of money is the root of all evil'.
> 
> Thanks go to Dan Hollis for reminding me of this.

A better translation is:

   the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
                                      ^^^^^^^^
which is from the New International Version.
Certainly it is easy to point to individual instances of evil that are not money
related.

Follow the URL:
http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=1+tim+6%3A10&NIV_version=yes&NASB_version=yes&KJV_version=yes&NKJV_version=yes&NIV-IBS_version=yes&RSV_version=yes&DARBY_version=yes&YLT_version=yes&WE_version=yes&showfn=yes&language=english

for a comparison of translations.

And seeing that we are way off topic already....
I would have said that the "core" is probably the one place where
these people aren't evil.  They just have lots of layers of evil
hiding that core.

NeilBrown

> 
> -- 
> Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>
> 
>     Copyright (c) 2000 By Brian Litzinger, All Rights Reserved
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[OT] Re: Money stifles innovation

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 05:47:10PM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 12:57:14AM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > > The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
> > > embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.
> > As a person with a some decades of experience with patents and
> > trademarks, and playing among the various sides, I can state
> > quite unequivocally that the problem is money.
> 
> Actually the problem is lack of morals and bad people who are really evil
> at the core (you wouldnt want them for your neighbor).

Actually, it's because we've made it illegal to corporations to behave
ethically when it conflicts with short-term shareholder profits.

http://www.ratical.com/corporations/

It would be nice if it were so simple as to declare the involved parties as
evil.

Re: [OT] Re: Money stifles innovation

[Dan Hollis]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2001 at 05:47:10PM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > Actually the problem is lack of morals and bad people who are really evil
> > at the core (you wouldnt want them for your neighbor).
> Actually, it's because we've made it illegal to corporations to behave
> ethically when it conflicts with short-term shareholder profits.
> http://www.ratical.com/corporations/
> It would be nice if it were so simple as to declare the involved parties as
> evil.

I know both good and bad people at corporations. The bad people were mean
and nasty before they joined the corporation, the corporation became a
vehicle for them to abuse others and directly translated to the
misbehaviour of that corporation. Doing bad things comes naturally to
them.

The good people went out of their way to prevent the corporation from
doing evil things, or left the corporation so they would not be party to
the unethical behaviour.

-Dan