News Xerox sues Google, Yahoo!

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/02/24/xerox-sues-google-yahoo/1

 

Patent troll, anyone? Is it just me or does xerox seem to have a patent on everything remotely related to computers? What does xerox actually do these days? Only thing I can think of is printers.

 

I heart USA

 

Dont forget the 3 former Google employees that have just been given a suspended sentence for breaking privacy laws over a video on Google Video.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7307442/Google-to-appeal-Italian-court-ruling.html

Bad day for Google all around.

 

That Italian legal decision is scariest news I've seen in a while.

 

Hardly a patent troll, most patents come from actual products developed and available in the market. Document solution is essentially the easiest way to sum up the business, in terms of anything related to documents or information management, right from data entry, to handling, to transmitting it, to printing it, so a very broad range of technologies are used.

 

So are you saying that xerox invented and patented search and yahoo and google have to pay them for it? Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

 

Xerox has been so hugely mismanaged throughout the years I wouldn't be surprised if they did invent everything Google uses, but didn't have any foresight to protect/develop it.. I'm so glad my dad is finally retiring from working there for the past 36 years

 

Read the article, not just the heading, all the details are in the 200 or so words!

pendragon is write, there was a time when Xerox didn't patent their developments and as such missed out on exclusivity of their inventions of windowed UIs, mice and ethernet. That's one of the reasons there is such a culture of patenting in the company today.

 

I did read the article and I even followed the patent links but they seem awfully general to me. Maybe my brain isn't working right?

 

The problem is these patents apply to anything that fits the description, even if they didn't actually make those things.

 

thats why patents should be discontinued or have a maximum of 5 years for companies to develope and manufacture, after that it becomes a free for all

 

Well the auto query patent sounds so vague that it actually resembles MS access. But then again, MS has too big of a wallet., could just squash them with loose change.

Wonder if we could patent the process of filing of overly generalised, sweeping patents and sitting on them as a source of income. Then we could troll the patent trolls!!

 

This is just crazy.

Can you imagine R+D companies spending millions on development only for it all to be lost after 5 years? We would see less and less technological development. The patent system protects companies and individuals that invest money, sometimes their entire life savings.

If you want to use someone a patented idea from another company then negotiate a license with them. Don't steal the idea. If there is justification in this case then Xerox should be compensated.

 

So... who isn't suing Google right now? I swear everywhere I turn this week someone is suing Google or the EU is trying to steal money from them.

 

"maps, video streaming, and shopping comparison services due to their ability to integrated data held in different sources into a single unified interface."

sounds like information to me, is xerox going to take everyone to court that puts together data and present's it in a formative way?

 

You still need to be in possession of something that fits the patent's decription.

 

I agree with you, except here is the clincher: can you prove that the idea is stolen? Those two patents essentially encompass almost everything that goes on in computers and I highly doubt that the whole industry stole the idea from xerox.

 

If the defence can prove the idea existed before the patent was granted then it invalidates the patent. Looks like it will be down to precise wording which is why the whole patent process takes so long in the first place, getting all the lawyer wording sorted!

 

The whole auto-query could be applied to so many things, including macros in a spreadsheet! I can only presume that the complete patent wording is a lot more concise.

I think it's time the patent process required a working example, prototype or something similar to make a patent application possible rather than just a random idea that is chosen and then basically documented for abuse later on. It should not matter whether or not the company or person goes ahead with production of the content of their patent, but they should at least show willing.