If what you are feeling is that scraping for commercial purposes feels "unfair," that is because if it is not allowed it traditionally falls within a legal cause of action commonly called "unfair competition." In the same vein as trade secret theft. So the law does square that circle, but the line drawn is a fuzzy gray one. Its unfair to free ride off a competitor, but yet some kinds of actions that look like free riding are in fact allowed.
Secretary of State / corporate information is often sold in bulk without any need for scraping without authorization.
> Daily Filing Update – a file that includes all of the database updates for a specific day. Customers frequently begin by purchasing a Master Unload in order to create a database, and then subscribe to the Daily Filing Update so that they can download and update their databases on a daily basis to keep their data current with that maintained on the SOS BEST database.[0]
The 1990s Microsoft issues were antitrust. They tried "embrace-extend-extinguish" because they were in a monopolistic position, and this tactic was viewed as anticompetitive.
But Google (at least with respect to phone OS) was in the position of the startup, and Sun was the big market player. Now, Google had with ridiculous resources at its disposal, of course, but at the time not using a monopoly position to twist arms of carriers, for example. It's not anti-competitive to spend a lot of money to win.
You are absolutely correct. Patent law is a specialized legal field and having experienced judges is a plus for everyone, because it creates certainty that the parties can rely on when making business decisions. This judge has implemented some interesting local rules that are aimed at decreasing litigation costs at the outset of the case. There is nothing here that says this judge is biased towards patent owners or accused infringers (and I can attest to that, knowing Judge Albright personally). I would have no trouble advising my client sued in this district that they will get a fair shake if the case has no merit.
There is a downside though, where this differs from SDNY and bankruptcy. Patent law could benefit from major reform to eliminate abusive lawsuits and decrease transactional costs of enforcement and defense. Because patent owners can still shop around for some lawsuits, a judge trying to build a docket like this does not have an incentive to implement that major reform from the ground up. Any reform would only be tweaks, not paradigm shifts (like the local rules mentioned above). The problem is akin to regulatory capture.
“ Patent law could benefit from major reform to eliminate abusive lawsuits and decrease transactional costs of enforcement and defense.”
No one disagrees. But that reform should come from legislation, not judges. Judges are supposed to apply the law as written to the best of their abilities.
This is not how to look at this if you want to find a way to solve our society’s ills. The gunman was the instigator because he travelled to riots and not to protect anyone he knows or his own property. He brought an assault rifle and walked the streets. Why would anyone not looking for trouble do that? That’s vigilantism. The police are there to deal with it. Not untrained teenagers. Remember, the second amendment is because we want a “well regulated” militia not randos with guns. When you do what this person did, you make it inevitable that gun violence will be the result. That’s why self defense laws do not protect you if you unnecessarily created the situation that led to you having to defend yourself.
The problem with police violence is an extension of this. Police training is directed at control and overwhelming force. Even when there is an alternative path to de-escalate. When you are being attacked, even if you just committed a crime and the attacker is a police officer, your instinct is to fight back. The result is continued escalation until someone is dead.
But are there clear rules of what kind of "help" you can and cannot provide? None of the individuals harmed while attacking the gunman needed to intervene either - and I'm sceptical they all had first-hand knowledge of the 1st shooting versus hearing the allegations of the crowd/mob.
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Shoulan_v._Peng_Yu - same ethic of "if it wasn't his property, he must have been looking for trouble"; If that's the case every out-of-town protest/rioter is also an instigator.
Truth is, we don't know what preceded Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse, and until we do, we don't know who threw the first punch.
> The police are there to deal with it
last I heard the US police have no duty to protect. Until this is changed, people will be in no hurry to surrender the right to bear arms.
Not in any way. That is a debate over Good Samaritans helping vs not getting involved. This is about vigilantes showing up with assault rifles when the police are already there.
He was 17, so regardless of his actions, he's still a kid. And he wasn't just walking around, he was defending business and property. Earlier in the day he was cleaning graffiti off of buildings in Kenosha
How things change. I think that just 10 or 15 years ago a person risking their own safety to protect someone's else building from being set on fire and burned to the ground would be considered a hero.
I'm not saying that he's innocent. It's just crazy how "That was not his business or property" makes a valid point today.
But aren't the IP laws in this case evidence of motivation for the creative mind? An incentive of being rewarded and not ripped off? We've had power tools without this feature for 100 years. What's a few more years to give the inventor exclusivity and a chance to profit, and then it becomes public domain?
Volvo's donation of safety patents is nice, but it is a major manufacturer. The inventor of SawStop was not.
at a bear minimum we need something like FRAND for safety devices that require safety related patents to be licensed fairly, non-discriminatory and with reasonable fee's
Gross vs. net sales just means a small percentage adjustment, unless the manufacturer makes a broken product. The other costs of making a table saw also make up a fixed percentage of gross sales, not net, but despite that, the product is still sellable.
Chick-Fil-A’s app is extremely well done. Just this morning I ordered breakfast from a store, but drove to the wrong one and parked. The app noticed this automatically, asked if I wanted to move my pending order to this store, and after pressing “Yes” my food was walked out to my car < 5 mins later.
Its not that the companies should have kept the cash, though. Buybacks are not inherently bad. But the US, many buybacks were a direct result of the reduction in corporate tax rate in 2017. Instead of using their greater cash flow to reinvest, raise wages, etc, they bought back stock primarily held by wealthy and institutions. Effectively a transfer from the US Treasury to the wealthy class, leaving the US with fewer options to weather the current storm for its citizens as a whole.
I guess for any given public assistance you could demand something about layoffs ... but I would be wary of side effects / worry about killing the company through such policies.
One would assume that airlines requiring a bailout are financially marginal, and unable to survive without nationalization, while airlines not requiring a bailout would be in a financial position to weather the temporary black swan event causing the need for bailouts in the first place (for example American Airlines might require a bailout, but Southwest likely will not).
If every airline needs a bailout, you might have to evaluate a program of greater scale; injecting cash directly into every airline in a coordinated effort, but taking equity and putting in place governance (with a board seat or more than one) in those needing the bailout. Those who won't accept such terms would be permitted to fail.
My apologies it's not a binary answer, and more "it depends."
I think "buybacks are not inherently bad" is a good point and still true in a theoretical perfect frictionless vacuum. But when we look at the entire economy and how all the money has been flowing mostly tax free from the government and workers to only (literally only) the super-duper rich via this buyback tool, then it's obvious we have a problem.
For many businesses, reinvestment would have been a waste because they didn't have any expansion opportunities with strong profit potential. In those circumstances the shareholders would rather get the cash back directly.
It seems that only once you have kids you realize how much of society that doesn't make sense to you is the way it is in order to accommodate the logistics of children and schooling.
I don't understand this at all. As someone who doesn't have children it's the extreme opposite to me. Modern society is actively hostile to having children.
It's both. As a non-parent, you can have a vague, high-level idea about the demands of parenthood, but there's a lot of crucial and non-obvious details that aren't communicated to people without kids - mostly because it's either super boring or really tacit knowledge. So the parts of society that are run by parents tend to be kid-friendly; the parts run by childless are the opposite.
Examples of nonobvious consequences of parenthood include:
- Parents of pre-teens tend to be constantly late for everything. That's not because of lack of organization, but because the kid will randomly soil their clothes or do something else that needs to be taken care of immediately.
- Parents are also constantly interrupted. Especially with the first kid, it seems everything is a life-threatening emergency, so the moment it even looks at you funny, you'll start calling your spouse at work to consult or coordinate a doctor's appointment. Some workplaces accommodate that (mostly those staffed by other parents), some don't. It becomes a question you start asking about on the interviews.
- Say your company offers to send you to a conference or a training seminar. You'd probably jump at the occasion (yay, free education and zero responsibility, all on paid company time!), but you might be wondering why your coworkers all refuse to go, and don't even show any excitement about it. It's probably not because they're lazy, or just dispassionate 9-5 workers. It's likely because they're parents, and you can't just go to a conference as a parent. It's a huge logistical challenge.
- Parents like big cars because of storage space. Going up and down the stairs with stuff gets tiring really fast, so you end up e.g. storing trolley and surplus diapers in the car. If you didn't want a car before, you'll start to want one now. This goes against the general trend of environmentally-conscious living.
- If you aren't addicted to coffee yet you will be after having a child. You'll also learn that polyphasic sleep is a real thing (if it wasn't, nobody would survive the first months of parenthood).
- You'll start talking about shit with other people. And I mean literal shit.
- You'll bankrupt yourself if you try to buy everything new for the kid; you'll likely and out of a sudden become super frugal and very aware of all local clothes/items exchange/giveaway groups.
- A babysitter isn't a luxury, it's mental healthcare in the city.
I could go on and on, but it's late and my kid will wake up in about 5 hours. I'll be drinking an extra coffee tomorrow.
