2 edits | reply to Dogfather
Re: Trolls... Well, that's assuming they didn't invent said technology or bought the rights to it. Let's take this example farther. Say your car that ran on grass made lots of money. However, you wanted more. You sold the patent to your wealthy friend. He didn't invent the idea, you did. However, you relinquished your rights to use the idea further. He now owners that title. Pretend he didn't want to market the car just yet. Let's say wealthy neighbor is waiting for gas to go to 10 dollars a gallon to make further cars. However, someone comes along and steals his car and makes a copy of it. His car being the only existing, working prototype. He A) didnt invent that car (you sold him it and the patent). B) He only bought title to it. Should he have no claim to go after the company that stole and copied it? See, t his is where your logic is failing you. Selling a patent and buying a patent are one in the same. They own the rights to that idea and no one can come along and use it to make something better. It sucks and stifles creativity and future developments but it's life. |
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 DogfatherPremium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
4 edits | Read the article, your example isn't what happened here.
They're stealing patents of other Cablelabs partners while refusing to give up theirs. Only CONTRIBUTORS to the DOCSIS spec are eligible for royalty free DOCSIS stuff. Rembrandt nor the company that they supposedly bought their patent from, Paradyne contributed to DOCSIS, thus they aren't entitled to goodies in the DOCSIS patent pool.
So basically by Rembrandt making their own few cable modems to claim they're losing money to people like Motorola, they're infringing on patents of other companies.
IOW, in order for Rembrandt to get royalty free DOCSIS stuff, they have to give up their DOCSIS stuff.
Same goes for their claims over ATSC. They're obligated to the original AT&T free license terms.
They're blood sucking leeches and their executives and their lawyers should be jailed for racketeering.
In your example it would be like you want to build a car based on a "Unity Car standard" developed by manufacturers to insure interoperability.
You invent the way it runs on grass, but you want to use Yokohama tire tread designs, Chevrolet designed fuel injection and a Sony patented CD player.
You take those patents from the Unity Car royalty free patent pool while refusing to put your grass burning technology into the patent pool for others to use...a violation of the Unity Car project agreements.
Or the company you bought the grass burning technology from already put it into the patent pool but then you later suddenly claim exclusive rights to grass burning technology and that everyone else in the group is infringing on your grass burning stuff (again, while you're using all of their technologies). It's bullcrap.
DOCSIS is built on this free patent exchange and if these scumsuckers succeed in stealing other's contributions while forcing others to pay for their supposed contribution, it will end these types of industry partnerships and we will be back to K56Flex vs X2 type standards wars and licensing schemes all over again.
You can't have standards when a company is permitted to steal from and extort money from other contributors to the standards. |
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 cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:7 | Generally I appreciate how patents are suppose to work...sharing how an idea or concept works in exchange for exclusive rights to it for a fixed period of times. But it's times when companies do like you describe, do like Rambus did a while back and try to get their technology adopted as a standard and then spring the patent card, or submarine a patent until it's very well adopted as a unoffical "standard" and then surface the patent, that really irk me about the patent process. |
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| reply to Dogfather
said by Dogfather:Read the article, your example isn't what happened here. ... this isn't really an "article" so much as someone's editorial posting on the topic of these lawsuits. you only have to read the first half of the first sentence to get that sense.
i certainly agree that you're entitled to your opinion, but for anyone to suggest that this post is some sort of unbiased news-reporting that can be relied on for its factual accuracy would be a bit of a stretch. |
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DogfatherPremium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | No guy, there are links in the item to MULTIPLE news sources as there always is for DSLR items. |
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