{"id":549,"date":"2008-11-10T20:48:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/?p=549"},"modified":"2008-11-10T20:48:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T20:48:00","slug":"abuse-of-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/?p=549","title":{"rendered":"Abuse of the System"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know abo<\/span><\/span>ut you, but I tend to keep an eye on the technical news. Every once in a while, something passes by that I have a hard time believing. Today is one of those days. Of course, it involves everyone’s second most favorite\u00c2\u00a0villain<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0(only because Microsoft won that race long ago)<\/span>. Without\u00c2\u00a0further\u00c2\u00a0ado, I give you the Halliburton of the day as reported in <\/span>Slashdot<\/span><\/a>\u00c2\u00a0:<\/span><\/p>\n

Halliburton, the company many folks know as Dick Cheney’s previous employer, has apparently taken an interest in methods of patent trolling. In fact, according to Techdirt, the company has\u00c2\u00a0applied for a patent on patent trolling<\/span><\/a>. Specifically, it’s applied for a patent on the process of finding a company that protected an invention via trade secret, figuring out what that secret is, patenting it … and then suing the original company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/span>
So there you have it. A patent designed to raid other people’s patentable stuff and then legally rape them with their own tools. What I have begun referring to as a Halliburton.<\/span><\/span><\/span>

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I have been through the process of applying for a “process” patent. I cannot believe this kind of abuse of the patent system will acceptable to the intellectual property community. The USPTO may very well grant the patent, but I hope that the legal battles involved in enforcement would favor the original trade secret organization. I understand that protection of an invention via trade secret is open to loss by disclosure. Not only losing the crown jewel, but having to pay royalties to a raider who used this process for using your own crown jewel just seems wrong.<\/span><\/span><\/span>

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What do you think?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know about you, but I tend to keep an eye on the technical news. Every once in a while, something passes by that I have a hard time believing. Today is one of those days. Of course, it involves everyone’s second most favorite\u00c2\u00a0villain\u00c2\u00a0(only because Microsoft won that race long ago). Without\u00c2\u00a0further\u00c2\u00a0ado, I give … Continue reading Abuse of the System<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[561,562],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dljones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}