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I'm honestly curious what the aversion is to reading patents and patent applications. Is it to avoid suspect patent infringement by being able to claim ignoran

I'm honestly curious what the aversion is to reading patents and patent applications. Is it to avoid suspect patent infringement by being able to claim ignorance? i.e. "I have not read any patent that relates to some work that I've created wholly on my own that out of coincidence achieves the same as a patented work." Does that actually hold up if defending IP?

pacaro 9y ago
Yeah, as osteele points out, it moves the needle from unknowing infringement to willful infringement. And willful infringement carries triple damages. When people have asked “how would they even know?”, there are usually two answers: 1) don’t underestimate what can come out in discovery, and 2) no lawyer is going to advise perjuring yourself
dwheeler 9y ago
> Does that actually hold up if defending IP? Yes. You are subject to triple damages if you read the patent, so it's foolish to read patents unless you have to. It's impossible to read all patents, and patents in almost all cases are useless, so "I didn't read the patent" is the normal case for software developers. Patents make no sense for software, and should be abolished for software.