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Tech at Night: Regrouping after patent, Net Neutrality, and competition losses

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 17th, 2011 at 02:30 AM  | 

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Tech at Night

We’ve lost some battles lately. That’s what happens when we let a radical Democrat become President. We let Patrick Leahy’s America Invents Act pass, imposing on America a Euro-style patent system that rewards lawyering, not being the first to invent something. We let the FCC pass an illegal Net Neutrality power grab, and that will have to go to court soon.

We’re even seeing some nominally Republican-run states get on big government bandwagon against AT&T, sadly joining in the effort by the Obama administration and Sprint Nextel to hinder competition and pad Sprint’s bottom line. What are Ohio and Pennsylvania doing there? Come on.

But at least we’re on track to get meaningful 4G competition. Some question the firm’s ties with the Obama administration, but I welcome progress toward LightSquared launching its network. Unlike Obama and Holder, trying to prop up Sprint, I actually want competition and lower prices.

Remember Google and defenders claiming it only patents things defensively? Even as it seeks to acquire Motorola Mobility, a firm engaged in offensive patent suits against Apple? Well, Google just bought over a thousand patents from IBM. Hmm.

Wikileaks is all about principle, and will stand up for the little guy as long as you’re not African.

You have to love committed ideologues of radical, extremist agendas like the ‘media reform’ crowd. They see vast conspiracies behind the refusal of some to champion Net Neutrality. Maybe if they’d pick agendas that weren’t so out of the mainstream, so that they wouldn’t have to rely on well-funded astroturf, maybe people would actually speak out. But George Soros‘s wallet doesn’t need spokespeople.

BGR reads this “smartphone shipments” chart and sees the decline of RIM. I look at it and see why Apple is going after Samsung’s infringement of iPhone and iPad so hard: Samsung’s catching up.

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  • holystone

    Do you have any comments or insights regarding this recent revelation and how does that affect your support for LightSquare?

  • poorredman

    Exactly Neil, the so-called patent reform bill is a gift to big business. Republicans should be railing the dems about this, Solyndra, and GE all the time, to get it into peoples minds that liberals are the ones that support corprate cronyism.

    As an inventor myself, an already complex and expensive process that most independent inventors cannot afford, just became nearly impossible to compete with corporate legal teams.

  • peg_c

    I have the same question.

  • ajshea

    I don’t like the idea of First to File, but we have to make some changes in our patent system — it has become insane, particularly in the area of software patents.

    Here’s an interesting article by Harvard professor Charles Duan on “What Does First to File Mean in the Patent Reform Act?” http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/writings/ftof.shtml

    The short answer is that there are two changes:
    1. More things are prior art to patents under the new law.
    2. There are no interferences under the new law.

    To see how this happens, let’s look first at how the current law works in terms of prior art, and then look at the new law. [...]

    Under [the current] system, there are many documents that predate the filing of a patent but are nevertheless not prior art to that patent. For example, if a document was published six months before a patent was filed, but the inventor on the patent came up with the invention nine months before filing, then the document is not prior art. [...]

    If you were hoping to invalidate patents by filing your own applications to provoke an interference, then under the new law you take a much simpler approach: file applications or publish your inventions early, because they will be prior art to any subsequently-filed patents. [...]

    Under this system, there are many documents that predate the filing of a patent but are nevertheless not prior art to that patent. For example, if a document was published six months before a patent was filed, but the inventor on the patent came up with the invention nine months before filing, then the document is not prior art. [...]

    Under the new law, the date when the inventor came up with the invention becomes mostly irrelevant. Generally there are two ways that a document can be prior art according to the new law:
    * The document was published before the patent was filed,
    * The document is a patent that was filed before the inventor came up with the invention

    If what professor Duan writes is correct, then it does sound like a measure of correction to some of the current insanity.

  • ajshea

    Space Command’s General Shelton testified that LightSquared causes dangerous interference to GPS.

    As a broadcast engineer with interest in this area, I’ve been following LightSquared fairly closely, and I honestly don’t see how they can ever make it work without causing destructive interference. The physics just doesn’t permit it, even if they triple the number of transmitters (to cut down on the power required by each transmitter, which cuts back on the area covered).

    I’m afraid your support for LightSquared is misplaced Neil. Its a nice idea, but its in the wrong place, and they are going about everything in the wrong way (potentially illegally, but what difference does that make to this regime?).

    LightSquared has this vision of beellions, and they appear to be willing to pull whatever strings they can to be able to cash that in, icebergs be d–d.

    It sounds like someone bought out a previous license, thought that they could make it go with more money, got told by engineers that it wouldn’t work, and went and found more lobbyists instead of listening to their engineers.

    Unless LightSquared moves far away from the L-band, they just can’t avoid causing problems for GPS receivers.

    http://www.ainonline.com/news/single-news-page/article/fcc-kicks-lightsquared-can-down-the-road-31093/

    In previous tests even with lower-power transmitting stations than planned in final deployment, LightSquared?s 4G broadband transmissions still caused interference with high-precision GPS devices, including those for aviation. In its September 13 public notice, the FCC has apparently avoided facing up to the only solution to prevent any interference between the 4G broadband network and GPS, which is to move LightSquared to another frequency.

    Instead, the FCC chose to kick the can farther down the road.

    [the problem is I doubt there is another frequency available]

  • poorredman

    Special earmark in the patent reform bill

    Link

  • von

    –> The America Invents Act is actually a switch to a “first inventor to file” system, not a strict first to file system. The difference is that the USPTO will still entertain derivation claims, i.e., claims that the filing person (or entitiy) derived the invention from someone else. (Basically, a “you stole my idea” claim.) Priority disputes are dead, however. That’s a dispute over who invented first between two unrelated inventors or inventor groups.

    –> Neil will never buy this, but the media’s focus on the switch to first inventor to file is misplaced. Yes, it’s a significant change and may have Constitutional problems, but it is not the headline. Moreover, there is not a lot of evidence that it will destroy small inventors. Canada’s switch to from a first to invent system to a first to file system is instructive here: http://patentsmatter.org/issue/pdfs/20100614_canada_first_inventor_to_file.pdf

    –> More important are the parts of the bill that (1) limit joinder of unrelated parties in a single lawsuit (an attempt to limit lawsuits by patent “trolls,” which create a serious drain on business*); (2) expand the definition of prior art in certain respects and restrict the kinds of business methods that can be patented; (3) expand the kinds of challenges allowed to pending or recently issued patents; and (4) revise, maybe with detrimental effects, the inter partes reexamination process.

    –> But the important issues, above, are really inside baseball, and not known or very understandable to the layperson. Hence, lots of handwringing over the less consequential change to first inventor to file. (Not “unconsequential,” of course, but anyone who is claiming that the sky is falling needs to address the data from Canada’s experience.)

    von

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    But I don’t think LightSquared is responsible if some GPS manufacturers are out of spec, as they’re saying, if that’s what you’re referring to.

  • ajshea

    The GPS bands are in the middle of bands designated for satellite use only. LightSquared wants to use those bands for terrestrial 4G use. Interference cannot be avoided in this case. The FCC was wrong to grant their provisional application for waiver, and they are wrong to continue allowing “testing”. The “testing” is a delay tactic.

    LightSquared interferes with existing use — it has nothing to do with out of spec GPS receivers. That’s a red-herring argument from LightSquared to cover up the physical impossibility of what they want to do. LightSquared is out of spec.

    There are no GPS receivers that can filter out the jamming that LightSquared puts out. No amount of political lobbying will change physics and nature.

  • ajshea

    .

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    You happen to be pro-Obama on Patents and pro-Obama FCC on LightSquared?

    And you don’t bother to link anything even as you use smear-tastic language like “jamming.”

    So just what is your personal agenda against LightSquared, and what is driving it?

  • evilleramsfan

    as far as Lightsquared is concerned. Having worked in a field that has been using gps for 20 years, it is wrong for them to encroach on a system that has widespread use.

  • acat

    This has potential.

    Popcorn

    Cover the bottom of a soup pot with coconut oil.

    Add enough popcorn kernels, shaking to ensure all kernels are coated.

    Cover and heat over medium heat until the kernels are popping steadily. Reduce heat a bit.

    Shake the pan periodically to move the unpopped kernels back to the bottom.

    When the popping becomes intermittent or when the first smell of burnt popcorn reaches your nose, remove from heat, add salt and seasonings to taste, and dump into a large bowl for serving.

    Pick out and dispose of any burning pieces.

    Cover the bottom of the pan in hot water and a bit of detergent immediately for ease of later cleaning.

    Fresh popcorn, as above, takes a bit more preparation than nuking a bag, but it tastes so much better it’s well worth the effort.

    Mew

  • evilleramsfan

    Those were put out in 2008 after there had been a long established standard on GPS bands. The international recommendations (from ITU- a UN agency) that Lightsquared references don’t mean anything due to the fact that GPS is an American system that has been in place for a long time. I can guarantee that if Lightsquared makes the current GPS system unusable, there will likely be a tidal wave of lawsuits as a result. Just one GPS unit in my line of work costs around $20,000. When one loses a piece of equipment as important as that, it becomes a big deal…..

  • Adjoran

    but LightSquared is just trying to use the government to get a competitive edge, their founder is a big Obama bundler, just like the Solyndra guy. See a pattern forming?

    Blocking the ATT-TMobile merger helps Sprint and LightSquared, because if DTE must hang onto TMobile they sure aren’t going to invest much in it.

  • drrhythm

    Neil,

    I’ve been following this Lightsquared debacle for a long time now. It’s a potential disaster for aviation and numerous other users of precision GPS.

    I’ve been a professional pilot and flight instructor for almost a decade. I’m extremely well versed in the usage of GPS, and I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing its use in other applications, namely farming. Some of my most interesting flight students were large landowners in GA, and I was able to spend some time seeing how they used a precision GPS network in the countryside to operate their farming equipment.

    You wouldn’t believe the capability precision GPS allows in both aviation and agriculture. In flying, it allows us to “shoot” precision approaches to rural airports that can’t afford more expensive instrument landing systems. It increases safety and allows precise navigation in three dimensions.

    In agriculture, the technology allows tractors to get maximum efficiency from fields in plowing, planting, fetililzing, and harvesting. The GPS systems on the tractors (using LAAS, or Local Area Augmentation Systems) are accurate to within an inch or so, enabling the tractors to run essentially on autopilot and use every inch of their fields precisely. Not only that, but seeds can be planted in pairs exactly 2 inches apart, 1/2 inch deep, or whatever the experts think will yield the best crops that year.

    These systems are fantastically expensive to invest in. Imagine you are an aircraft owner or farmer and have spent all this money investing in a system to give you advanced capability, only to have it ruined or degraded to uselessness by some politically connected hotshots.

    These systems are relied on nationwide by untold numbers of people in sectors critical to transportation and agriculture. I witness it firsthand every day. No 4G mobile internet is worth ruining or degrading those capabilities for.

    There is a good article at aviation international news online: http://www.ainonline.com/

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Government has been obstructing LightSquared every step of the way.

    Look, I don’t doubt the Obama administration is capable of corruption. I just don’t see any point in time where LightSquared has gotten regulatory favors.

    If you show me when they got some, rather than the same old s tonewalling, then I’ll be happy to change my mind.