ITC Judge Calls For US Xbox Import Ban 255
symbolset writes "In the long running dispute between Motorola and Microsoft, Judge David Shaw of the ITC recommended Monday an import ban on Xbox 360 S consoles, as they are found to infringe Motorola's patents (PDF). The judge also ordered Microsoft post a bond of 7 percent of the retail price of all unsold U.S. Xbox inventory. The decision will go to the ITC's board of commissioners, who will either uphold the recommendation or overturn it. 'Microsoft argued that Shaw's exclusion order does not serve the public interest because it would leave consumers of video game consoles with only two options to satisfy their needs: the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo Wii. Shaw rejected that argument, finding that the public interest in enforcing intellectual property rights outweighs any potential economic impact on video game console buyers.'"
This follows news last week of Microsoft winning an import ban on Motorola's Android devices.
Compromise time boys! (Score:2, Insightful)
This could wind up being a great way to force a compromise.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
Both sides are assholes on this one. They seriously need to overhaul the US patent system, the balance has been tipped (for a long time) to where it stifles innovation way, way more than it fosters it.
About the only things that deserve patents are fundamental discoveries and drugs that are unique and cost hundreds of millions to develop and test. And even then, just provide some kind of "formula patent" that only lasts 5-6 years.
Most patents are fundamentally flawed because they rely on a small leap from someone else's existing work. Sure, if you just step outside the box and totally invent zero point energy in your mad scientist lab you should get a patent and make $5 trillion from it. But most "inventions" are just trifling little bullshit extensions of something that exists already.
Re:Compromise time boys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much this. Let's be honest. No one involved in this patent-war-on-twelve-fronts gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut about "the public interest."
They need to go ahead with the ban. The only thing that's ever made the giants in the sandbox ever stop and go "wait a sec..." was MAD.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Microsoft won an import ban against Motorola for a patent on "generating meeting requests", so I'd say turnabout is fair play, in this case.
Although you are right about the damages, in a way: how are all those red-ringed XBOX 360s supposed to get replaced now? *ducks*
Google is evil.
Ah, right. Let me check: timestamp of post matches that of article, 4 post history all on Google/MS discussions (all today). Oh look, a shill!
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think it's a good ban to prevent all motorola android devices from being imported because they can be used to organize a meeting ? An eye for an eye, bitches.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:4, Insightful)
Well maybe if Microsoft didn't want to be victims of broken patent law, they should have done something about it... like lobbying to fix the patent system. Corporations are good at lobbying about stuff they care about and Microsoft is no exception - they both lobby for what they want and they've also exploited the broken patent system when it suited them in the past.
The public won't fix the patent system, politicians only listen to the corporate wallets today. So let's make bad laws work against corporations and then maybe these corporations will try to change the laws.
Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Motorla and others should all be victimized by patent law as much as possible. Just like the MPAA/RIAA should be made victims of bad copyright law. Then things will change for the good of the public.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
unfortunately, turnabout play does nothing for the customer or the nation.
It does if it convinces companies that they need to lobby against the patent system instead of for it.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
About the only things that deserve patents are fundamental discoveries and drugs that are unique and cost hundreds of millions to develop and test. And even then, just provide some kind of "formula patent" that only lasts 5-6 years.
I know of very few cases when a fundamental discovery was made by a commercial company, they usually shy away from anything that takes a decade or more to develop. Usually this is funded by the goverment which is supposed to have a longer term view.
Confucious say. Fair is fair. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft wants it both ways. They want to block somebody elses product.... Android..... but not their own. Fairness says both companies should be blocked. Good for the judge.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
About the only things that deserve patents are fundamental discoveries and drugs that are unique and cost hundreds of millions to develop and test. And even then, just provide some kind of "formula patent" that only lasts 5-6 years.
Abolish patents entirely and replace private research with publically funded research. The hard work (discovering new drug targets) is done by the NIH anyway. All pharma does are the clinical studies which are pretty much rote. They could easly be done by the public as well. And if we take the profit motive out of the situation, maybe we won't see 100,000 [fda.gov] annual deaths due to adverse drug reactions.
Patents exit to encourage private investors to invest in research. But if we directly fund research, we need no patents. The best part is that when the public does all the work, we'll get to keep all the profits too.
Re:Huuuuge Balls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We don't care... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the judge is applying the law as it stands.
The claim is that patents are "in the public interest" and that somehow they makes the world a better place.
But if you look at the sheer tangled web of patent lawsuits which cover Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Motorolla, Google, and I'm not even sure who else ... I'm not convinced that patents help the 'public', or helps to spur innovation. They have the opposite effect.
You can say you don't care, but the fact of the matter is there's huge swaths of products and technologies you couldn't get into the market with because you'd violate a gazillion patents and unless you have a couple of billion in licensing fees, you'd get sued into oblivion.
I believe one of the patents in this whole mess is "scheduling an appointment from a mobile device" ... which is almost exactly the same as "scheduling an appointment in real life", and nearly almost exactly similar to "scheduling an appointment with a computer".
But, some drooling idiot decided that something that is well known but with a mobile device is an "invention". And then we get patent stupidity like this. (I'm sure there's more to it than that, but some days it feels like it.)
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:4, Insightful)
unfortunately, turnabout play does nothing for the customer or the nation.
The patent law is only half the problem. The other half is the business practices that these companies
choose to take.
Given the inertia in changing the patent system, (good luck seeing that in your life time), the import bans are (arguably) the way to go.
Only by forcing these things into the nuclear condition can you ever get big companies to realize that cheap and perfunctory
cross-licensing is the only way to assure there are no costly misadventures down the line.
Once it become the norm to cross-license (or very cheaply license), and the companies realize its more
trouble and less revenue than it is worth to go after someone for these tiny little improvements and
combinations of existing technology, they will perhaps stop beating each other up with lawyers.
They could then do it all on line, via email, and maybe they would simply resort to publishing these inconsequential
compilations of technology, so that nobody else could patent them and let the chips fall where they may.
Its fitting that Microsoft got caught in this trap. Now if we can catch Apple's next phone and block it
at the ports maybe some progress can be made in this direction.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:4, Insightful)
you demand that all software patents come complete with working prototype source code.
I am told that there are a thousand mousetrap patents in the patent office, each one with blueprint describing how to build one. Now, if we use the same approach for software patents, you should be able to create the same concept in a different way - eg, trapping mice, or maybe sliding something to unlock a screen.
As it is, software patents simply patent the concept, and they are usually as vague as possible. It is also easy to submit a thousand patents, making working code be supplied with it would make the number of submissions reduce, and would let us have open source code after the patent expires, and would allow people to implement the same thing as long as it didn't use the same codebase (or a significant amount of the code already patented).
It would possibly be the best compromise between no software patents and patenting some algorithms that are real inventions such a GSM radio or video codecs.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>False.
Oh well, OK. I guess I was wrong then. Thanks for setting me straight. It's not like I've worked in biology for a decade or anything. It's not like I've taken medical pharmacology classes where they explained exactly who is responsible for what part of the drug discovery process. Nah, your simple assertion without evidence is all I need to change my mind.
Oh hell, I have, and I know what I'm talking about. And it's easily verifiable if you go to the library and read a book or two about the pharmaceutical industry. The fact is the pharmaceutical industry contributes very little to the process, and pockets the vast majority of the profits. Deny this if you like, it only illustrates your ignorance.
Re:Ridiculous patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally people don't go into research because of a 'profit motive'. Research jobs do not pay all that well, esp the ones on the 'heavy lifting' side of thing, so they tend to be staffed by people who are motived through doing good research and building reputation.
Not sure what a video about some jerk has to do with anything.