Developer Forum

uch attention is paid to the the four main types of "IP", copyrights;
patents; trademarks; and trade secrets, all of which have a generally
negative impact on our freedom, particularly as it relates to software,
and doubly so for Free Software, like Linux.

However there's a 5th "IP" which rarely receives much attention, but is
just as big a threat to our freedom: Design Patents.

[quote]
In the United States, a design patent is a patent granted on the
ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of
industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture,
beverage containers (see Fig. 1) and computer icons are examples of
objects that are covered by design patents.

A similar concept, a registered design can be obtained in other
countries. In Kenya, Japan, South Korea and Hungary, industrial designs
are registered after performing an official novelty search. In the
countries of the European Community, one needs to only pay an official
fee and meet other formal requirements for registration (e.g. Community
design at OHIM, Germany, France, Spain).
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

Consider the impact of Microsoft claiming OpenOffice.org was an
infringement of the visual design of Microsoft Office, for example, or
if the KDE e.V. Board claimed Windows 7 was an infringement of the
visual design of KDE4.

We already know how desperate the Intellectual Monopolists have become
to protect their failing and archaic business model, stooping to new
lows, such as stalking children whose parents are wrongfully accused of
"piracy", threatening people for playing music to horses, harassing girl
scouts singing camp fires, extorting money from charity workers singing
Christmas carols, and prosecuting radio stations for throwing away promo
CDs. Now they sit huddled together in dark basements plotting against
our freedom, in a conspiracy called "ACTA", which seeks to circumvent
democracy with extortion and blackmail, all with the eager help of their
corrupt political cronies, who shield this conspiracy under the flag of
"national security".

Don't ignore the threat "Design Patents" might also pose in this agenda.

Here's one such example, unrelated to software, but nonetheless a
victory for common sense and freedom:

[quote]
Vax "clear" of infringement of Dyson registered design

In a judgement handed down on 29 July 2010, the UK High Court has
decided that Vax dealings in their ach Zenvacuum cleaner have not
infringed a UK registered design belonging to Dyson.

...

Infringement of a UK (or European Community) registered design is
determined by whether or not the alleged infringement produces a
'different overall impression' from the registered design on the
'informed user'. Protection does not extend to features of a product
appearance which are dictated solely by their technical function, and a
protectable design must be new and have individual character. As the
design of the DC02 was very different from that of known cylinder vacuum
cleaners at the time of registration, Dyson argument, in essence, was
that the overall impression produced by their registration should be the
same as that of the ach Zen despite the various differences.

At trial, Vax Counsel argued successfully that many of the design
details in the ach Zenwere in a category in which the freedom of the
designer was constrained for technical reasons. These technical aspe

Lunatic alert!!
Get the net.

Nothing to read here folks except the ranting of a crazy person.
--
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Linux...Disappointing users for 19 years.
Linux::It's free when your time has no value.
See Liarmutt in action http://www.yqcomputer.com/

Good for him. Too bad you didn't think of it.





And the more you use others' IP to make money or enjoy life, the better
you feel.

In fact, [H]ypocrite, you spent your entire career profiting from the
ideas of others that came before you.

You sad spectacle of a freetard.

The entire OSS world is like that. They're actually proud of their
Johnny-come-lately theftware hobbyware clonejob (cr)apps.

Early '80s: "...Stallman embarked on a legendary hacking campaign,
independently replicating on the MIT system all the improvements made by
Symbolics..."

http://www.yqcomputer.com/ *** t_Interviews/Richard_Stallman_Interview.pdf

2006: "Vista is introducing alot of new features and I'm pretty sure we
can (or will very shortly) replicate most of those features in Ubuntu."
http://www.yqcomputer.com/

2007: "Previously, it was only possible to play flash movies with
proprietary software" http://www.yqcomputer.com/


From the beginning, and on through the next 25 years, the inspiration
for "free" software has been to shamelessly copy the ideas and features
of proprietary products.

Before the Glassy shits that M$ claimed to have created to revolution
desktop environments, I have been using emerald with the same theme plus
Beryl, which even before the bad copy of WinVista of the shift-switcher
plugin, had a much better one.

Look at compiz-fusion now... over nine thousand times better than
anything from Win7. Ohhhhhh yeaaaaa, open-source hobby-crapware sux?

...DFS fails once again.

Verily I say unto thee, that Marious Barrier spake thusly:



Apparently they spent 10 *Billion* on Vista, and that's the biggest
steaming pile of shit the software world has ever known, so clearly just
"spending money", however much, is irrelevant to the outcome, and
entirely unrelated to how much those who spend that money deserve to
profit by it.


Bullshit.

Microsoft has never had such a thing, in fact their entire product line
is nothing but stolen or assimilated property.


/Everyone/ should be able to use /all/ ideas for free, because no single
person or company has the m *** right to claim "exclusivity" to the
knowledge they clearly acquired from everyone else.


You mean like Bill Gates stealing (what became) Microsoft BASIC from the
dumpster at Harvard?

Or Microsoft stealing MSDOS from Gary Kildall's CP/M?

Or stealing the Windows UI from the Apple Lisa?

Or stealing every subsequent desktop UI concept from Apple?

Or assimilating Internet Explorer from Spyglass?

Or stealing the name "Internet Explorer" from Synet?

Or copying Windows NT from VMS?

Or assimilating OneCare from GeCAD's RAV?

Or copying MS-SQL from Sybase?

Or assimilating MS Word from Xerox?

Or assimilated MS Exchange from Consumer Software Inc.?

Or copying C# from Java?

Does Microsoft even /have/ such a thing as any software they didn't just
buy, steal, copy, assimilate, plagiarise, or otherwise acquire from
elsewhere?


... quest to expose gangsters like Microsoft as a bunch of lying,
stealing, hypocrites.


--
K.
http://www.yqcomputer.com/

.----
| "Ibland r jag sjlva hindret. Oftare lnken."
|("Sometimes I am the obstacle. More often the link.")
| ~ Ibi "Kopimi" Botani, Piratbyrn co-founder.
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.31.5
05:55:19 up 3 days, 13:13, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.02

Homer stated in post XXXX@XXXXX.COM on 9/7/10 9:55 PM:




How much they spend is irrelevant... if they make it they own it. Others do
not have the right to use their ideas. If you do not like it do not use it.
If you like it, then *buy* it, do not dishonestly copy it.


Then they have no intellectual property. Why whine? Oh, wait: you are
wrong. They clearly have added computing paradigms - with a recent example
being the Ribbon interface found in MS Office and other MS programs. Do you
think that, for example, the OO.o folks should be able to just use that even
though it is MS who spent the time and money to develop it? If so, why?
What *right* do they have to MS's work there?

Oh, and if you think Windows is so bad, then why does KDE work so hard to
copy it in many ways... heck, look at the Start button and task bar ideas
which are common in Linux.


Acquired from everyone else? What? So MS had no need to spend the time and
money on, for example, the Ribbon UI? They could have just taken it from
someone else... even though nobody else had made such a UI before? And
above you whine about how MS has never created anything... now it seems you
think nobody has.
...

--
Survey: < http://www.yqcomputer.com/ ;
241 of 571 said they use Dreamweaver (42%)
Tim Adams: "_80% DO NOT USE Dreamweaver AT ALL_!"

DFS stated in post i66uje$be8$ XXXX@XXXXX.COM on 9/7/10 8:06
PM:


Homer shows no sign of understanding how work and ideas have *value*. Just
amazing.

--
"YOU were the person claiming that the ~ told people to go to
HardDrive/users/username/ while I stated the ~ indicated the name of the
hard drive only." -- Tim Adams

Ideas come flying for nowhere by spontaneous spawning? Most of the
things, you don know where they got the original idea from. or it was
built based on previous experiences.

Marious Barrier stated in post i67774$1u1$ XXXX@XXXXX.COM on 9/7/10
10:36 PM:



What makes you think that?


Of course many - likely most - new ideas are based on old ones. So?

This is not an excuse for the OO.o developers to use the Ribbon UI without
permission if they decided they wanted to. At least not for some time... I
agree the IP laws are silly in terms of time limits and the like - but
whatever time limit or other limit we place on them is going to be somewhat
arbitrary. Drinking age, voting age, age of consent, and even the time a
human life begins are all also somewhat arbitrary decisions. There is no
black and white on these things so we just do the best we can. So be it.
But it is no excuse to simply deny people the right to defend what they
create.

--
" *** IS sex by the very definition of the words. Therefore they ARE
identical when presented in that order." -- Tim Adams

Verily I say unto thee, that Marious Barrier spake thusly:


Exactly.

Snot seems to think the person/group who gave MSO that "Ribbon" thing,
the most universally derided interface ever, was born with that divine
knowledge. The fact is, everything we know, we got from elsewhere.

--
K.
http://www.yqcomputer.com/

.----
| "Ibland r jag sjlva hindret. Oftare lnken."
|("Sometimes I am the obstacle. More often the link.")
| ~ Ibi "Kopimi" Botani, Piratbyrn co-founder.
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.31.5
15:17:51 up 3 days, 22:36, 0 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00

Homer stated in post XXXX@XXXXX.COM on 9/8/10 7:18 AM:



Your opinion of the value of the Ribbon UI is irrelevant. Why even bring it
up? So back to the topic: do you deny that MS spend lots of time and money
researching and developing and testing the Ribbon UI?

That is a serious question: are you aware that they spend a great deal of
resources in the creation process? You currently show no sign of
understanding this.

--
"YOU were the person claiming that the ~ told people to go to
HardDrive/users/username/ while I stated the ~ indicated the name of the
hard drive only." -- Tim Adams

So why isn't [H]ypocrite whining about Google and how they patented the look
of their home-page?

<quote>
Google Patents World's Simplest Home Page

After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to
convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company's iconic home
page. We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's
an innovative "graphical user interface."
</quote>

http://www.yqcomputer.com/

On 2010-09-08, the following emerged from the brain of Ezekiel:




Okay, that's just too crazy for words...

--
18:32:16 up 11:32, 2 users, load average: 0.21, 0.21, 0.10
I am son of Liarmutt.
Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul
~ They Might Be Giants