

Google gets patent on floating data centers - techdog
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-patent-on-floating-data-centers.html

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owinebarger
If they don't pay taxes, wouldn't they be subject to (real) pirates?

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vaksel
also target for submarines sponsored by Microsoft live search

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pj
It used to be, you actually had to build something to get a patent on it. Now
you can just imagine it.

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mixmax
Broadly speaking there are three criteria you have to fulfill to get a patent.
They are:

\- It has to be novel, meaning that the invention must never before have been
published

\- It has to be usable, meaning that it has to provide some useful function

\- It has to be non-obvious to an expert in the field.

I don't think this has changed.

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pj
I am not talking about the laws or the words, I'm talking about how people in
the patent office behaved. In the past, if you wanted a patent for a device,
you had to be able to show that what you are describing in the patent actually
would work, that you'd actually created something that implemented the idea in
the patent.

That is no longer the case. Now you can simply describe something on paper and
get a patent, even if the description in the paper isn't sufficient to
implement the invention by others.

The whole point, the idea, the impetus behind patents (as a concept) is that
you are sharing your repeatable design with the world so they to can replicate
your invention in /their/ lab and build upon it.

The point was to make the world a better place for everyone by releasing ideas
in the the world with a mechanism that can protect them and enable the risk
taker to reap the rewards of the risk without the fear that someone will
simply steal the idea and make a bunch of money off it and leave you in the
dust.

This philosophy has been lost and patents have morphed into a corporate
strategy that makes the world worse for everyone except the patent holder.

The content of the patent has no value. You can have the best idea, with a
device, with a demonstrable instance of the idea and it doesn't matter because
it still costs millions of dollars to defend in court.

Decades ago, patents had value, now they have none. They describe processes
that won't work. They are vague enough to cover, not only the invention, but
anything even remotely /like/ the invention even if the invention as described
in the patent would never work.

Patents used to be tools of inventors and now they are tools of lawyers.

So yeah, the lingo hasn't changed, but the practice has. It's the practice
that I'm talking about. The Bill of Rights hasn't changed in hundreds of
years, but today, the press is put in jail, the govt listens to your calls and
reads your emails...

Kinda sad really...

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anigbrowl
_Patents used to be tools of inventors and now they are tools of lawyers._

Depressingly true. Mrs Browl works for an electronic discovery company, whose
service is to organize huge volumes of documents for legal cases, and it
happens that many of these are related to IT patents. For obvious reasons I
can't discuss any specifics, but even casual shoulder-surfing has resulted in
a great many eyerolls.

To me, a major part of the problem is that while the profession of law
purports to be based on reason, it lacks a proper axiomatic framework and
success frequently depends on the exploitation of ambiguity...and sadly, many
lack the critical thinking skills to deconstruct arguments made this way. If I
were ever unlucky enough to be defending myself in court, I'd seriously
consider opting for a trial by judge rather than by jury. I would far rather
have one intelligent person evaluating my case than 12 random folk.

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ivankirigin
Patents outside national jurisdictions? That's funny.

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lsb
There's the piracy, and there's also the question of replacing components. The
costs of replacing machines on a boat are very different from on level ground
that trucks can drive to.

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datums
I would love to see some diagrams of the design.

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pj
google it, there are plenty.

