IBM to buy Sun?

It is reported that IBM is in negotiation to buy Sun Microsystems.

So, let's see....

Sun gets:

• The technical and financial backing of a strong company that still understands the value of serious computer hardware (as compared to rebadged lowest-bidder x86 PCs)
• Access to IBM's patent portfolio
• Access to POWER processors

IBM gets:

• Sun's customer base
• The expertise behind Java, ZFS, and the still-strong SPARC architecture
• The opportunity to metaphorically stick a finger in the eye of the revenant corpse of HP

Sounds like win-win to me.

"Reasonable presumption of novelty and nonobviousness"

So, Discovery Communications (that's Discovery Channel and others) is sueing Amazon over the Kindle.  The underlying patents under which they're sueing apparently date back to 1992.

As described in an article by CNET's Greg Sandoval yesterday ("Discovery hits Amazon with Kindle patent suit"), the parent company of the Discovery Channel (Discovery Communications) has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com, claiming that the Internet retailer's Kindle e-book reader infringes Discovery's U.S. patent 7,298,851, titled "Electronic book security and copyright protection system".

I read through this patent in some detail, and honestly, it looks formidable.  It was filed in 1999 as a "continuation in part" from patent applications dating back to 1992.  Among the prior-art disclosures listed are 52 U.S. patents or applications, 34 foreign patents or applications, and 15 nonpatent publications. It has 171 claims, three of which are independent.  Those are all signs of a strong patent.

A little further down the article, the analyst, Peter Glaskowski, lists the first of Discovery's claims in this patent:

1.  A method for encrypting, sending, and receiving electronic books upon demand, comprising: creating a list of titles of available electronic books; transmitting the list of titles of available electronic books; selecting a title from the transmitted list of titles; communicating the selected title to an electronic book source; supplying a selected electronic book corresponding to the selected title to be encrypted; supplying an encryption key; encrypting the selected electronic book using the encryption key; supplying the encrypted selected electronic book; supplying a decryption key; and decrypting the encrypted selected electronic book using the decryption key.

Then, further down again, he comments that "the patent has been examined in light of so much prior art that it has acquired a reasonable presumption of novelty and nonobviousness".

Um, excuse me?  "Reasonable presumption of novelty and nonobviousness"?

Let's look at that first claim again, simplifying the verbiage down to what it actually describes (and postponing the encryption part for the moment):

1. The buyer chooses a book.
2. The seller downloads the book to the buyer.

Um ... pardon me, but ... exactly what part of this is it that's novel and non-obvious, again?  How the hell ELSE would you do it?

Once you get that part out of the way, the third element described — encrypting the book during transmission — is a trivial addition of long-preexisting technology in a completely obvious application.  If you want to protect the book from copying by eavesdroppers during download, OF COURSE you encrypt it.

This patent is about as novel and non-obvious — and was as novel and non-obvious even when it was granted in 1999, apparently after seven years of the USPTO saying it wouldn't hold water — as the idea of cooking food by applying heat to it.

Maybe I should file a patent on drinking liquid from an open container by putting the opening to the mouth, with the mouth slightly open, and tilting the container towards the drinker.

Mission creep

Australia censors Danish censorship, and the Wikileaks press release about it:

The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.

In late 2008, Wikileaks released the secret Internet censorship list for Denmark, together with a press release condemning the practice for lack of public or judicial oversight. Here's an extract from the press release:

[...]

Two days ago Wikileaks released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand.  Of the 1,203 sites censored this year, all have the internally noted reason of "lese majeste" -- criticizing the Royal family.  Like Denmark, the Thai censorship system was originally promoted as a mechanism to prevent the flow of child pornography.

It's always the way.  There's always a good, ethical-sounding reasion why governments "need" any new power.  And then once they have it, they start using it for other things outside its original charter, and which would never have passed public muster — like making sure people don't put their trash cans out too early, for example, or preventing them from seeing any criticism of their government.  Or making sure they don't know what you might be hiding from them.