What is more important - human life or “intellectual property”? Intellectual Property, of course.
In any case, employees of the Priority Dispatch Corporation think so.
This is a very significant case, which firstly shows where the road leads from good intentions (I recall that initially all types of intellectual property were invented to stimulate progress), and secondly, how far we have already come along this path.
I wonder how cannibals like Roman_Mix feel like reading such stories?
Another "grimace of capitalism" happened to the developers of the next FLOSS-development . But some spicy details give a special cynicism to the whole story. Cases when commercial software developers do not want to lose an expensive feeder and judge developers of FLOSS alternatives are no longer news. Just recently, Microsoft took up this. But in this case, the situation is “more fun" because human lives are at stake first, and also because it was not even the program that was banned, but a piece of paper!
How did it happen? Several people, led by Bob Austin, decided that making software for ambulance services would be a good idea (he worked for several years in fire departments and ambulance services - and, presumably, he knew that there was a chronic shortage of money in these organizations - cruel reality). In addition to cash wins, there is another side to the coin: it is incredibly difficult to achieve even small changes from commercial suppliers of such systems.
And inside this subproject there was a small subproject: Cards 911. In essence, it contained a “program for a person”: what questions should be asked to the victim and in what sequence (where did the accident happen? What exactly happened? How many people were injured? Etc .). Answers could lead to other parts of the same document (or, possibly, to the outside) where additional explanations were given. The entire document could be downloaded as an ODS file or a PDF file.
Of course, it turned out that the idea doesn’t have any news whatsoever and, considering where and when this idea was born, it could not be patented. And so it turned out. Priority Dispatch Corporation sent the developer a list of 10 patents (for pedants: 5857966 , 7106835 , 6607481 ,6106459 , 6078894 , 6076065 , 6053864 , 6010451 , 6004266 , 5989187 ), which this document (again: just a document!) Violated and demanded to destroy all physical and electronic copies of this document. Since Bob and other developers did not have money to defend their rights in court, this was done.
But the story did not end there: after studying the above-described patents, it turned out that it was simply impossible to create a useful document of this kind (in any case, it is impossible to compile a document that complies with the NHTSA and ASTM standards) - at least if these patents are interpreted in the way that lawyers of the Priority Dispatch Corporation interpret them (and if they are interpreted differently, this can result in millions of dollars of judicial battles). So you want, you don’t want, but you have to emergency services to buy documents from Priority Dispatch Corporation (and other companies that bought the license, of course).
The developers themselves have already resigned themselves to the loss and closed the project and simply wanted the general public to know about this case - because they can’t fight a corporation, even the largest one, in court - and this is also a very characteristic feature of recent years. However, the story received a rather wide resonance and, perhaps, in this particular case, lives will not be laid on the altar of "intellectual property", but this is unlikely to change the whole system.
Here are such things: we have already reached the situation when “intellectual property” is used to prevent people from helping save the lives of other people . But have we already reached the point of absurdity or should we go so far that the inhalation and exhalation will be patented and every movement will require royalties?
Link to the original (the above text is a retelling, since there is no translator from me).
This is a very significant case, which firstly shows where the road leads from good intentions (I recall that initially all types of intellectual property were invented to stimulate progress), and secondly, how far we have already come along this path.
I wonder how cannibals like Roman_Mix feel like reading such stories?
Another "grimace of capitalism" happened to the developers of the next FLOSS-development . But some spicy details give a special cynicism to the whole story. Cases when commercial software developers do not want to lose an expensive feeder and judge developers of FLOSS alternatives are no longer news. Just recently, Microsoft took up this. But in this case, the situation is “more fun" because human lives are at stake first, and also because it was not even the program that was banned, but a piece of paper!
How did it happen? Several people, led by Bob Austin, decided that making software for ambulance services would be a good idea (he worked for several years in fire departments and ambulance services - and, presumably, he knew that there was a chronic shortage of money in these organizations - cruel reality). In addition to cash wins, there is another side to the coin: it is incredibly difficult to achieve even small changes from commercial suppliers of such systems.
And inside this subproject there was a small subproject: Cards 911. In essence, it contained a “program for a person”: what questions should be asked to the victim and in what sequence (where did the accident happen? What exactly happened? How many people were injured? Etc .). Answers could lead to other parts of the same document (or, possibly, to the outside) where additional explanations were given. The entire document could be downloaded as an ODS file or a PDF file.
Of course, it turned out that the idea doesn’t have any news whatsoever and, considering where and when this idea was born, it could not be patented. And so it turned out. Priority Dispatch Corporation sent the developer a list of 10 patents (for pedants: 5857966 , 7106835 , 6607481 ,6106459 , 6078894 , 6076065 , 6053864 , 6010451 , 6004266 , 5989187 ), which this document (again: just a document!) Violated and demanded to destroy all physical and electronic copies of this document. Since Bob and other developers did not have money to defend their rights in court, this was done.
But the story did not end there: after studying the above-described patents, it turned out that it was simply impossible to create a useful document of this kind (in any case, it is impossible to compile a document that complies with the NHTSA and ASTM standards) - at least if these patents are interpreted in the way that lawyers of the Priority Dispatch Corporation interpret them (and if they are interpreted differently, this can result in millions of dollars of judicial battles). So you want, you don’t want, but you have to emergency services to buy documents from Priority Dispatch Corporation (and other companies that bought the license, of course).
The developers themselves have already resigned themselves to the loss and closed the project and simply wanted the general public to know about this case - because they can’t fight a corporation, even the largest one, in court - and this is also a very characteristic feature of recent years. However, the story received a rather wide resonance and, perhaps, in this particular case, lives will not be laid on the altar of "intellectual property", but this is unlikely to change the whole system.
Here are such things: we have already reached the situation when “intellectual property” is used to prevent people from helping save the lives of other people . But have we already reached the point of absurdity or should we go so far that the inhalation and exhalation will be patented and every movement will require royalties?
Link to the original (the above text is a retelling, since there is no translator from me).