Yep. To a Canadian, “DaVinci” is Dominic. 
Using a laser pointer to amuse a cat is trivial. So are all of the inventions mentioned in this post here.
None of this matters if the standards are not adequately enforced.
Again, it doesn’t matter if the laws are not enforced. I’m certain all of the software patents mentioned in my link above were pre-existing ideas by the time the patent was applied for.
I’ve stdied this case at considerable length, going so far as to try to contact the patent holders and reading the legal document file on it. This really ought not to have been granted a patent, and, in fact, the examiner gave it a “final rejection”. But the inventors ponied up enough movey for another review, and made a video of the idea and provided arguments that overcame the examiner’s objections on previous trials. I think that, if the examiner had infinite time and resources, this would never have been granted a patent. Patent experts seem to think that the crunch of overwork had a lot to do with this one getting through, and that it would have folded at the first challenge. as far as I can tell, the patent was never challenged, but it was never licensed, either. After making the first two payments to maintain the patent*, the inventors failed to make the third, most expensive payment, and the patent lapsed. You can now use your laser to play with your cat with a clear conscience.
*One of the nasty things they don’t tell you is that you have to make a series of payments through the lifetime of the patent in order to maintain it, and the fees escalate. This has been in place since 1980. I sincerely hope the company holding my patents has kept up payment.
CalMeacham: Yes, I know about the horrible overwork patent examiners face in the USPTO. I’ve been through threads on this issue before, sometimes with one of the board’s resident examiners, and it’s been mentioned multiple times. That’s the biggest reason I don’t think software should be patentable and all existing software patents should be declared invalid. (I don’t think that would involve the examiners having to go through all of the millions of existing patents. It would just be something the judge could look at when individual patents are used in court.)
More lesser-known things invented by Leonardo da Vinci:
the snowblower
cardboard
teabags
the staple gun
insurance fraud
disco
hubcaps
Sea Monkeys
the oscillating fan
gravy
Cheez-Its
the piccolo
nipple clamps
the belt sander
pinking shears
fuzzy dice
bacon bits
the weed whacker
the Cap Snaffler
lederhosen
boogie boarding
pierogies
the blackhead extractor
Deely Boppers
Sometimes the laws are enforced in the courts, not at the Patent Office. Issuance of a patent is not the last word. Is it unfortunate that the gatekeepers of the United States patent system are a bunch of native-Vietnamese-speaking 26 year old G6 civil servants? Arguably it is. Stupid patents get granted. Fewer (AFAICT) are being granted these days, and courts are (AFAICT) quicker to strike down the ones that are granted.
This is cold comfort if the lawsuit is going to bankrupt you. Even if you ‘win’ it is a very expensive process.
A pedant never knows the use of an idiom. Wouldn’t you say it is so? There is only one Da Vinci, the rest are mere details.
And it was poorly written. But it was a fun read. And his error making ways have netted him millions! Millions I say!
I did too!
You are correct (unless the case was so frivolous that you can convince the court to award you attorneys fees).
But this is not a problem unique to patents, you know. Anyone can sue anyone for anything, and impose non-trivial costs, if they can find the courthouse, pay the filing fee, and slop together a half-assed complaint. And the prevailing defendant generally foots his own bill.
Of the three policy problems you should be worried about, given your stated concerns, only one has to do with patents:
- The threshold is too low for filing and maintaining litigation.
- Prevailing defendants generally aren’t reimbursed.
- Patents should not be statutorily presumed valid.
You wouldn’t have much trouble getting me to lend a sympathetic ear to any of those positions.
Huerta88: All three of your proposals sound reasonable. (Except the second. I never fully agreed with ‘loser pays’ (if that’s what you’re proposing) because it backfires badly if someone sues (say) IBM and IBM pays the Nazgul to slap him down. Nazgul are damned expensive.)
How about this: Software shouldn’t be patentable as a matter of subject matter, the same with pure mathematics. My reasoning is twofold, with the first being the pragmatic concern that the USPTO just isn’t qualified to handle software patent claims and so lets too many bogus software patents through.
The second is that the line between software and pure mathematics is thin to nonexistent. Look up Prolog, Haskell, and Metamath some time: How do you reasonably distinguish them from things like the propositional calculus and monad theory and algorithm theory? SQL is set theory. Prolog is the propositional calculus. Metamath is any formal logic system you can imagine. Haskell is mathematical monads and algorithms.
If we allow software to be patented, we might as well allow logic to be patented. Have you paid for that reductio ad absurdum?
I think you already dragged it down there by tossing me into the category of the ‘uninformed masses’.
Milan, Italy-- A football game between legendary rivals AC Milan and FC Internazionale was interrupted during the second half by the unexpected appearance of Leonardo da Vinci. The famous artist/inventor briefly commandeered the pitch at San Siro stadium in order to test an experimental trebuchet of his own design. When informed that the trebuchet was no longer employed in warfare, Signor Leonardo replied heatedly: “Vai a cagare! I’m Leonardo da Vinci, culo! When I want an opinion, I’ll roll over and ask your mother!”
He declined all comment on the topic of his having been dead for the past five centuries, instead quickly constructing a small clockwork automaton to make a series of profane Tuscan gestures on his behalf.
The Renaissance engineer then used his trebuchet to launch an iced fruit concession stand into the third tier of the stadium, whereupon he declared the experiment a “success” and cleared the field.
Inter striker Ibrahimovic and midfielder Dacourt went on to score against Milan goalkeeper Abbiati for a final score of 2-0.
Oh, please. There’s a huge difference between being called uninformed (that is, lacking in knowledge on a particular field) and saying that somebody is forced to sit alone at parties. You are really reaching here, and I think you know it.
More importantly, the question of whether someone is uninformed is entirely relevant to the veracity of his or her claims. In contrast, do you really want to claim that scholars are indeed forced to sit alone at parties? Or that this somehow nullifies their opinions or expertise?
Wow. What a brilliant rebuttal. Truly, this demonstrates that we are wrong to dismiss his expertise on matters historical.
Sigh.
I’m not uninformed on this topic. I am tediously informed.
And please don’t ‘oh please’ me and try to dress that comment up as if it was a clinical one, it was clearly a jab. - look again:
You’ve also drawn two analogies, both of which differ from the topic of discussion in that they describe an inflammatory or derogatory name - for this reason, they’re just not useful. There are plenty of examples of people being called names they didn’t themselves originate or approve.
I’m not going to try to argue in defence of some of the statements I made earlier, because I think I stated them a bit more strongly than I intended to. However, I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with people referring to Leonardo da Vinci as just ‘Davinci’ - Quite unlike ‘Whistleblower Goatboy’ or ‘darkie’, it carries no negative connotations at all - and I don’t see why it can’t just fall into the very large category of names that people are called, either to their knowledge, or without it, that aren’t actually their absolutely true names.
I mean, if it were not a useful, easily understood label, it would be impossible for people to descend upon its every mention with a scholarly correction, because they wouldn’t recognise it.
If you guys don’t like the term “uninformed”, try its synonym, “ignorant”.
Well, quite. It’s not inoffensive.
No, you’re not.
It’s only a jab if you consider “uninformed” to be inherently insulting. For my part, I will take the judgment of informed scholars over the opinons of uninformed laypeople.
I think you’re deliberately avoiding the issue. I used those specific examples to demonstrate the folly in your reasoning that whatever people call you is “by definition” your name.
Now you’re complaining that those particular names are derogatory, and therefore, don’t count. That’s simply irrelevant. Your reasoning therefore amounts to the following:
“Whatever people call you, that is by definition, your name, whether you like it or not.”
“What if people decide to call the black man down the street ‘Darkie.’”
“That’s mean. It doesn’t count!”
Heck, let’s use a non-derogatory example. You could always imagine that the neighborhood yokels decide to call the elderly man down the word “Joe Smith,” not out of any insult to the man, but because they simply can’t pronounce his real name. Does that mean that this is now his genuine name? Is he now forced to accept that this is his name, regardless of what he chooses to call himself?
I’m not going to branch off into a picky debate on the meaning of the word informed. I have been informed, tediously. I don’t consider the process of being informed to include consensus as an essential component. I’m informed about Phlogiston theory, but I don’t accept it. Is that any better?
It’s not only that, it’s the framing of the thing - for example, the above statement says much the same thing, but doesn’t seem nearly so pointed. Never mind - it’s not important.
I’ve already noted my regret over the way I posed the statement, so I don’t intend to say anything further on that.
No, he’s not forced to do anything he doesn’t want to (and neither is Leonardo da Vinci forced to accept any name we cooked up to refer to him, and not just because he’s dead) but apart from that, yes, it becomes a valid name for him, in certain contexts at least.