Sammy G

Upsilon Pi Epsilon

So I was just invited to join the UPE chapter for my excellence in CS. Anyone else in this? I checked out the members list and they are most of the other heavy hitters I know here on campus so thats good. I think I will do it. There are also chapters at other schools so it could be good networking later in life.
http://upe.wpi.edu/index.jsp

Mail

Just had a brilliant idea for a small application that sits ontop of Mail. Query me in person or online if your interested.

iAlarm 2 development is moving along. I got some good work done on the project yesterday.

24 LAME

The third season of 24 is getting to be really lame. This entry is worthless but I will continue with my wrant.

The president is always located in LA? Why is he not in the whitehouse where he belongs.

Michelle is the ONLY person in the hotel not infected with the virus. Give me a break!

There no protection on kim and sander's daughter when they are going back to CTU. They should be escorted and quarentined. The daughter could possibly be a way to infect CTU or Sander's could re-claim his daughter and kidnap Kim during the transport.

Tony chooses to save the life of his gov agent wife. Michelle is a gov agent and not a private citizen, so just as Chapelle was eliminated in the last episode she should be too. Especially when its the make or break for catching a terrorist threatening the world! Supposedly this is war but is turning into ABC family TV.

Quadfest 12 - Go

Quadfest 12 started today. The presidents of the united states of america rocked the house tonight! For more information stay tuned to http://users.wpi.edu/~quadfest/ for a detailed schedule of events for this week.

First Victory

Thats right, my frisbee team won their first game last night. Hopefully this will be the first of many victories and our team will win the tournament again. It felt so good to run that hard again. I scored one point and blocked two passes for an early turnover which resulted in two more points.

Weekend Wrap

Saturday night at UMass Amherst was awesome. Kilroy had a great show and the two sketches I was apart went just fine. It was so much fun acting on stage and being apart of the group putting the show on. The camaraderie felt between all the members was like when you’re playing for a winning sports team. After our set, 3 more hours of comedy filled the festival. The performances from Sketch 22 and the Poetry Dudes were my favorites. After the comedy festival we all had some pizza and made our way to the party that night for festival participants.

The highlight of the party was towards the end when we started a small circle that was creating a choreographed dance to the music. Eventually everyone in the main party room was in the main circle participating or watching and having a good time. The Mt. Holyoke girls were surprised with this at first but made quite good dancers. We all spent the night there and the UMass kids are so hospitable; all of us got to sleep on beds at the place fourty, bill, happy, gilmore and myself stayed at. Nick one of the UMass kids even brought us donuts and coffee in the morning. That morning was Easter Sunday and we learned that at UMass instead of an Easter egg hung, they do an Easter “keg” hunt in the forest. Unfortunately all the drivers had to get home for the holiday so we were not able to participate in the fun.

When I returned home I had a great lunch with Larissa at the Sole. If none of you have met her yet she is an awesome girl from Clark who can carry a wicked good conversation.

Life is pretty good now, however I feel like I am about to explode. My mind is running a thousand miles per hour about what can happen after graduation and is making me a bit uneasy but filling me with adrenaline. This is somehow one of my busiest terms ever at WPI, I will really miss participating in all the organizations after graduation.

I was also just asked to help a group perform a song at CoffeeHouse on Tuesday night. I definitely want to help out but am trying to make arrangements with all of my other commitments. :<

Best fortune: “You will never regret the past, you live every moment to its fullest”

bring the funny

on my way to UMass to perform with Kilroy. I am in 2 sketches tonight, hopefully ill be funny.

Software Patents

The high filing and litigation costs associated with software patents are often used as bargaining chips by corporations in efforts to keep small time software developers from seeing the benefit of a novel patent. In this essay I will discuss what constitutes a software patent, the way in which large companies exploit software patents and how software patents can be used to the advantage of a growing venture.

A patent can only be awarded if your discovery is a process, machine, articles of manufacture, and/or composed of matter. You also must show that the discovery is statutory, new, useful and non-obvious to people inside the industry of your discovery. This is all quite straight forward except for the statutory requirement. Statutory basically means that your discovery holds up to the rules outlined in the patent statue. Until the 1980’s software was considered by the U.S.P.T.O as mathematical algorithms, and since algorithms are not made up of matter they were considered non-statutory, therefore, un-patentable.3

In 1981 the slippery slope of software patents began with the case Diamond v. Diehr. This case resulted in the U.S Supreme Court ordering the U.S.P.T.O to grant a patent on an invention, where part of it was computer software. The software VIA an algorithm determined the heating times needed to best cure rubber. “The Supreme Court stated that in this case, the invention was not merely a mathematical algorithm, but was a process for molding rubber, and hence was patentable.”5 This demonstrated that software algorithms which manipulate values with real world meaning could be patented as a process. In 1990 the Federal Circuit finally put this in writing to clearly define what types of software were patentable.

The problem that has been developing with this history is that there are not enough qualified U.S.P.T.O employees to properly assess software patents and there is very little prior art available on this subject. This has lead to a lot of bad software patents awarded during the Internet boom and still continues today. Two large issues for software patent holders have recently formed. First, the validity of software patents is always in question which makes them more difficult to enforce in courts of law. Second, software developers tend not to patent their work because there is a wide assumption that software is not patentable and the costs to enforce a patent can be quite costly. These two factors lower the return on investment for independent software developers but allow large corporations to use software patents as a bargaining tool.

Large corporations encourage their software developers to patent any concept that drives or potentially could drive their proprietary software. Patent applications are then specifically written as broad and far reaching as possible and may not map to a current product they are offering. These corporations than build up a large patent portfolios, for example, from 1993 – 2003, IBM has been granted more patents than any other company each year. In 2003 IBM was awarded 3,415 U.S Patents bringing their total U.S. patent portfolio up to 23,000 patents in total. On their website they claim, “While many of these inventions find their way into IBM products and services, they may also be licensed to enhance the value of your business as well.”2 Roger Smith, IBM’s Assistant General Counsel regarding intellectual property law has been quoted saying “You get value from patents in two ways, through fees, and through licensing negotiations that give IBM access to other patents.”4 This empowers IBM or any other large corporation in avoiding legal disputes, because with their large patent portfolios, each company can always find one patent the other company is offending and vice versa. So most legal disputes are avoided, otherwise it comes down to who has the bigger portfolio and can expense the most legal costs in litigation.

With patents obviously valued at large corporation, what value can a small emerging company find in patents? New ventures are forced to play the patent game, in this game one of two sides must be taken for survival. On one side, the venture will be building itself up to eventually be acquired by a large preexisting company in its specific sector. Patents in this instance can dramatically raise the price of what the new venture is valued at. An example of this can be seen by the actions Vermeer Technologies took through their growing pains and how Charles Ferguson the founder, sold Vermeer to Microsoft for $133 million in January of 1996. Charles aggressively patented the technology Vermeer was founded upon foreseeing that if he ever went into a bidding battle between his competitors, the patents Vermeer held would increase the value and threat of his company. Originally Microsoft and Netscape valued Vermeer at $80 million, but after a presentation to Microsoft where the founder Charles strategically explained the novelty of their idea and how their position was solidified by the patents they held, Microsoft quickly raised their valuation.1

The other side in the patent game is for a growing venture to seek to hold its position and avoid being acquired. In this case the growing venture needs to put extreme emphasis on building a good legal team, a cash reserve for litigation costs, and an aggressive patent portfolio. Patent litigation is extremely expensive and must be done. If a company does not exercise its right to protect its patent, the patent becomes void. A large cash reserve can be grown by either focusing the venture on sales and keeping operating costs low or more likely, holding venture capitalists on your board that are willing to spend the money to protect their intellectual property. Continuing to grow your patent portfolio is also important, Vermeer during its growing phase hired an engineer whose sole responsibility was to draft up patent applications. The portfolio can also grow by acquiring smaller companies that hold novel patents.

Growing a company and continuing to hold your stance in the market by innovation and protecting your stance by exercising patents, is extremely difficult and risky. Thinking about the implications of patents and how you wish to grow your business early, can improve your probability of survival and proprietary control.

Bibliography
1. Ferguson, Charles. High St@kes, No Prisoners. New York: Times Books, 1999.
2. "IBM Intellectual Property and Licensing." . . IBM. 03/12/2004 .
3. "Patent Requirements." . . BitLaw. 03/12/2004 .
4. Quote from Think magazine #5, 1990. . 03/12/2004 .
5. "The History of Software Patents." . . BitLaw. 03/12/2004 .