http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm

_Collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies._

It has been invoked once. In 2001.

As to your example, I suspect he answer is still "no." It's not enough to just "add something" to the abstract idea--the thing you add has to have an "inventive concept." Field of use limitations ("quicksort to sort birthdays") or post-solution activity ("quicksort then you do something else") do not make the abstract idea patentable. Routine activity--and arguably, adapting algorithms to different data formats is routine in programming--aren't sufficient either.

One thing that's left unsaid in the cases but that matters in practice is that the patent has to "seem like a real invention" that produces a useful result. Courts deny that they do this, but post-Alice there has been a tendency to inject elements of obviousness and novelty into the issue of patentability. If your algorithm doesn't seem like it was hard to come up with, or it just produces numbers that are not directly useful to the end user, it's going to get labeled "abstract idea."

E.g. consider an algorithm for distributed reference counting. That'll get dinged as an abstract idea. However, if you come up with a way to manage image/video resources in a distributed cache that happens to use a distributed reference counting algorithm, that might pass muster.

Finally, the law has changed a lot in the last 6-7 years. But there are still lots of patents out there from back when the law was laxer that are getting litigated (and often invalidated in light of Alice).

That said, it's hard to say that any other jurisdiction has a far simpler or better test for software implemented inventions. It's just a hard question.

This is an excellent strategy, a unifying strategy, and one that seems lacking in today's social media driven activism.

The examiner then would be under pressure to glance over a lot of applications and just let the courts sort it out later.

I spent the early part of my career at a startup working on cognitive radio technology. Basically, algorithms to allow radios to use spectrum opportunistically, and to allow networks of such radios to maintain connectivity while dynamically changing radio channels.

Like everyone else in that field, our company patented its inventions. It's expensive paying roomfuls of PhDs to work on network algorithms. At the same time, cognitive radios are not a consumer product you can launch overnight to a billion people. It's not a market where first-mover advantage or network effects have any value. It's not a market where you can hide your "secret sauce" behind a web API. In fact, you usually have to deliver source to your customers. It takes years to get into the market, and competitors waiting for you to do all the work and reverse engineering your design would eliminate any possible return on investment.

Moreover, as a startup we had no expertise in manufacturing radios. Nor did it make any sense for us to get into that business--there are tons of companies that have the manufacturing expertise to build those radios. We could never compete with them on that front. The idea was always to develop the technology, then sell it to someone whose expertise was building radios.

To me, this parallels the question: where are the artists that want a copyright system of any sort?

The consensus seems to be that automation will abolish most drudgery over the next few generations. Won't the succeeding economy be founded exactly on creative and inventive intellectual labor? The intellectual property system as we know it may not be the mechanism to support it, but it seems like there should be some way of identifying and rewarding creators and inventors.

Inventors can profit from their invention by selling products, and keeping the invention details a Trade Secret. For example, Coca-Cola is protected as trade secret, rather than by patent.

Naturally this is less useful for something that can be reverse-engineered fairly easily, like, say, something in tech.

  What inventor wants to patent their idea and why do they want to do such an awful thing?

"We made a batch of 10 'somethings' last year, so we are not an NPE or a troll!"

Result: no one sues Megacorp for small amounts of money. Megacorp can get away with lots of things that they would otherwise be sued for.

(I don't know if this happens in reality, but I do think it's a legit thing to worry about.)

1. The English system doesn't necessarily protect a litigant. A well funded patent troll or a poorly funded but well meaning patent violator is now potentially on the hook for both damages and attorney fees. This is especially problematic when the law favors the accuser (as it seems to do in the American patent system).

2. It's a system that favors the "big guy", the party that has retainers for research, potential suit identification and preparation, not someone who might be accused. This forces smaller parties to invest at least some of their resources in "CYA" rather than doing what they are built to do (make products, for example).

3. It could affect supply of attorneys available to take a case or their fees. Say you feel there's a good chance of beating a wealthy litigant, so you charge more and misjudge? Or you don't feel you could be paid by the opposing party? Grant it, this likely cuts both ways. In the case of patent trolls, it might be beneficial, but perhaps not in others?

While the defendant in a patent lawsuit might feel they have an airtight case, it is never certain what will happen in a courtroom. You might lose and need to pay the damages PLUS attorney's fees for the plaintiff.

If I search for USB splitter by price on Amazon, I'm going to get flash drive cases, then USB cables, then flash drives, then I'll get into splitters. Newegg knows I didn't mean that, and that "products like this" shouldn't include everything with a USB connector on one end.

Of course it is bad, even ugly, when someone who has pledged to be follow Christ is an @$$, but do not however try to pretend like Christianity is what causes it.

For any so-called Christian scumbag there is an even worse non-believer, just read up on the reign of terror or the various communist regimes. (And don't get me started on mainstream Christinity and its refusal to, - and I quote "Teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you[...]")

You haven't seen the legacy code I have. One of the apps I worked on was modelling financial legal agreements. That was some truly shitty code. One function was over 50 printed pages with indentation levels I can't even begin to describe. It was also C++ written like Java. Tons of new's - no deletes or use of smart pointers. Leaked memory like you would not believe. Thankfully it was a batch-process. Even then, the server it ran on was allocated more that 128 GB of RAM because the hardware was cheaper than fixing the software.

A lot of complaints about the legal system seem centered around particular cases where things seem unfair, but it's important to bear in mind that the legal system as a whole tries to optimize multiple, sometimes-contradictory objectives, and every design choice represents a tradeoff.

* The tradeoff between discouraging frivolous lawsuits vs. discouraging legitimate lawsuits is one case

* Another common complaint is that laws and regulations are complex and inscrutable -- but the tradeoff is that a simpler, shorter law will be more ambiguous and therefore actually less predictable in practice until it's been thoroughly litigated

Sometimes it surprises me that professional software engineers deal with systems design tradeoffs every day in their own work, but then fail to see that systems design logic also applies to human institutions.

Interesting to see you advocate for "ask forgiveness later", one could render that as "if you're rich the legislature is happy as long as you give it a cut". You might as well ditch all corporate application of the law and just increase business taxes, same result but more economical.

I've heard from a Skepticon talk that some studies show that it is. They give more to charity, participate more in their communities, things like that.

At the very least, going to Church is most probably evidence that one is either striving to be a good person or already think of themselves as good persons. That last hypothesis would explain how they can sleep at night.

> Take that a step farther. When you already believe yourself to be a worthless sinner who has a blank check of forgiveness from Jesus, what incentive do you have to not act like a worthless sinner?

Aren't you supposed to make amends first? At the very least, show some contrition, and promise you won't do it again?

Do you have data source for this?

What we do is legal, therefore it is not unethical; if it were unethical, it would be illegal.

But, the idea that morality is tied to or because of religion is, erm, pure applesauce. To me, morality appears to be the moving zeitgeist of opinions on what makes a proper society.

At the risk of derailing this topic, the concept we have of privacy as a moral issue is likely to change as well. The common current idea (which I hold as well, please don't misunderstand) is that one's personal privacy, especially as related to communication, is sacrosanct.

But, in a world where it's getting easier and easier to just not give a shit about that and (generally, for 99.9% of the population's personal lives) have no ill effects, people are going to care less and less about data privacy and security, and the zeitgeist will shift.

I think that it will be the defining issue of the 21st century, and I have no idea how things will look coming out the other end.

...and the ones who are against death penalty for criminals often support abortion. So much for the idea that life is "hallowed".

(FTR: I am personally against both.)

(Source: Skepticon.)

If the government can't put together competent reforms, maybe they could put up some money to reward people who get bad patents struck down? Hell, maybe some percentage of infringement winnings could be directed into a reward pool for patent strikedowns.

It'd decrease the overall value of patents, but I'm pretty ok with that.

Of course, it's hard because paying the opponent's fees opens up other kinds of abuse. If you get sued by Coca Cola, you can't just judge what lawyer you can afford, you have to realize that even a small decision against you could come with the million dollars in costs they paid to take the thing to court. I don't really know a good answer to "litigation is expensive, and that produces abuse".

Sanctions or frequent invalidation of patents would be great, though. One other thing I would love to see is a change to the choice-of-venue rules - this would be less of a problem if we weren't seeing every case fought in East Texas where summary judgement is impossible to get.

I'm guessing this is a good example of Poe's law.

2) ???

3) ???

[...]

3.468^10128) ???

there are ~1m abortions a year, 3.2% after 18 weeks; Which is about 32,000.

In absolute terms, this is dwarfed by pre-18wk abortions, more than half happen before week 8.

Hence it may be relatively rare, but:

a) The law allows late-stage, hence 100% of abortions are allowed to be late stage.

b) those figures might change, but in absolute and % terms. Early abortions are the more common now, no guarantees how that may change.

I think the many pro-lifers see the distinction as a slippery slope.