Here is yet another example of software patent abuse. A patent trolling firm called Rates Technology is suing Google alleging patent infringement by its Google Talk program.
I haven’t found a copy of the lawsuit, but according to the Register, one of the two patents at issue is Patent Number 5,519,769, “Method and system for updating a call rating database”:
The advantages and features of the present invention now allows the database that stores billing rate parameters in a rate table for call rating devices to be updated. The call rating device is connected at a predetermined time and date via a data transfer line to a rate provider having billing rate parameters for a plurality of calling stations. Indicia identifying the call rating device and the date and time of the last update of the billing rate parameters is transmitted over the data transfer line to the rate provider. The rate provider verifies that the billing rate parameters should be updated, and it transmits to the call rating device the updated billing rate parameters when the rate provider determines that an update is required.
It goes on in this vein for paragraphs and paragraphs. Skimming the entire patent, I don’t really understand how this could be considered an “invention.” Obviously, if you wanted to find the lowest-cost route for a particular call, you would poll each possible service provider seeking their rates, and then store their answers in a database, which would be updated periodically. If any idea is “obvious,” that surely is.
I’m also bewildered about how Google Talk could be considered to have infringed this patent, unless anyone who routes calls over a switched network is considered to be an infringer. If that’s what’s going on, then this is a pretty good example of why a “no software patents” rule would good policy: whatever the merits of this patent as applied to telecommunications hardware, it’s pretty clearly an impediment to innovation when applied to a software-only product like Google Talk.
Update: Here is the complaint. It doesn’t appear to give any details about how Google Talk infringes the patents.
Richard Epstein has a new essay on the DMCRA, Rep. Boucher’s DMCA-reform legislation:
But means as well as ends matter in the constant struggle to deal with copyright piracy. In looking at the structural problem, the key question is just how much noninfringing use is there relative to the torrent of illegal copying. In answering this question, it’s not appropriate to look at the issue of interoperability, because that has already been dealt with first by the DMCA and second by the standard end user licenses. So it is not likely that there is much fair use to worry about.
Once the first of these two provisions is in place, then someone can circumvent the device for the appropriate purpose. But unfortunately H.R. 1201 does not say one word about how the circumvention in question will be limited just to those cases. Nor does it indicate what penalties will be given to individuals who first circumvent for fair use and then proceed, as is likely to be the norm, to circumvent for all other purposes. So if equipment can be sold for good purposes, then it can be used for bad ones, and the DMCA has lost its teeth. It is not too much to say that this stealth provision, which is never referred to in the findings of the act could work a comprehensive repeal of the DMCA. Much too much is lost, and very little is gained.
He’s wrong about interoperability: although the DMCA does purport to carve out an exemption for interoperability, that exception is of virtually no help in practice. The reasons are a bit complex, and I deal with them extensively in my forthcoming Cato Policy Analysis, so I won’t rehash them here. Suffice it to say that despite the reverse-engineering exception, the DMCA effectively makes it illegal to interoperate with DRMed products, and that’s a very bad thing.
I think the professor is being a bit too clever with his mock surprise at the “stealth provision” repealing the DMCA. I was under the impression that everyone understood that was its purpose. Indeed, I’ve heard that the primary reason that the labeling provisions were included were so that the bill could be considered in the Commerce Committee, chaired by a sympathetic Rep. Barton, rather than the Judiciary committee, which is less friendly to DMCA reform. If the Judiciary Committee were more sympathetic, Boucher would doubtless be happy to introduce just the DMCA-reform portions of his legislation there. There’s certainly nothing “stealth” about the bill, given that commentators routinely cite Boucher’s bill as effectively repealing the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.
He does, however, have an interesting point about the section that codifies the Betamax rule:
Continue reading →
Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache at CNET today report on federal agencies tracking web visitors against the rules. It’s not surprising, but it is disturbing. If government wants to increase surveillance in America and argues that we should trust them to follow the rules, then this example puts a huge dent in their argument. If a company made a similar mistake, they’d be facing a fine, but what will happen to the bureaucrats who ignore their public duties?
This is cross posted from Sonia Arrison’s blog.
Replace Howard Stern? Like him or not, that’s a tall order for CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting). In fact, the company chose two people to replace the famously potty-mouthed and popular radio host (who now operates from Sirius satellite radio, safe from the FCC’s prying ears.) On the east coast, listeners will hear David Lee Roth, on the West Coast, Adam Carolla–known to cable television viewers for hosting the “Man Show.”
So where do you go to promote your show if you are replacing Howard Stern? To National Public Radio, of course. This morning Carolla did just that, shaking up the normally ever proper and serious “Morning Edition” show.
Toward the end of the interview, host Rene Montagne asked Adam whether he’d been given a talk on FCC indecency rules. He had of course–Infinitiy’s lawyer’s aren’t crazy. But Carolla then quickly pointed out this stuff wasn’t new to him. Everyone asks him, he said, whether he’s just going to go out and start throwing the “f-bomb”. His answer: “I’ve been on TV for ten years, what the [bleep] do you think I’m gonna do?”
It was probably the first time in decades the Morning Edition crew had to use their bleep button. Stern may be gone, but things may still be interesting for CBS and the FCC. Stay tuned.
I started work at the Cato Institute at the beginning of 1997, and here it is 2006. As I write, I know that very few of the reforms that I and other free-marketers advocate have ever been enacted. Some bad legislation has been prevented (opt-in!); some unconstitutional legislation has been voided; the FCC has continued to move towards something more like real property rights in spectrum at an absurdly incremental pace. But universal service has not been abolished or even replaced with targeted subsidies or auctions. Indecency rules continue to be used to harass broadcasters. A few predicted that the Net would make censorship impossible, or that cyberspace would become its own sovereign nation. Yet China censors the Net with mixed success; Yahoo and other companies must cooperate or get out.
In spite of this, I am full of hope for the future…
Continue reading →
Ars Technica reports on the release of a full suite of open source VOIP software. This has some interesting policy implications. So far, regulators have been focused on getting large, commercial VOIP providers like Vonage to comply with the various tax and regulatory requirements. But as free VOIP solutions become ever more available and accessible, there won’t be anybody to tax and regulate. If I set up VOIP server in my basement, something I can probably do for a few hundred dollars, do I have to register with the FCC and my state regulatory agency as a telecom company? Or am I only required to comply with regulatory requirement if I connect to the PSTN?
Ars has a pretty consistently anti-corporate editorial stance, and I think their conclusion on the implications for net neutrality regulations gets the situation rather backwards:
The unwavering avarice of big telecom has also become an impediment, with at least one major ISP publicly asserting that it will not allow competing VoIP services to operate over its lines. In response to the blatantly anti-competitive sentiment of such ISPs, House Energy and Commerce Committe Chairman Joe Barton has proposed a network neutrality law that will prevent monopolistic pressure from devesting VoIP innovation. VoIP technology is increasingly important in our highly connected world, and the availability of open source VoIP solutions will help popularize the technology in less developed countries where organizations can’t afford the proprietary alternatives.
What the existence of open-source VOIP software means is that it’s going to be increasingly difficult for the Baby Bells to control its use. If it were just Vonage, the Baby Bells would simply need to figure out how to detect and block traffic for that one application. But if there are thousands of geeks tinkering with an free VOIP networking stack, there will be a proliferation of new VOIP applications that circumvent the Bells’ restrictions in different ways. Rather than fighting an arms race with a handful of easy-to-identify software companies, they’ll be fighting it with hundreds of geeks scattered around the world. It’s a battle they’re certain to lose. And that makes network neutrality legislation less, not more, necessary.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.