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"One of the problems for the target is that once the patent is issued by the USPTO, the court must presume it is valid... ...In the GNOME case, the sued projec
by neiman 6y ago
"One of the problems for the target is that once the patent is issued by the USPTO, the court must presume it is valid...
...In the GNOME case, the sued project, shotwell, predated the filing of the patent by several years, so it should be obvious that even if shotwell did infringe the patent, it would have been prior art which should have prevented the issuing of the patent in the first place.
Unfortunately such an obvious problem can’t be used to get the case tossed on summary judgement because it impugns the validity of the patent. "
Facepalm.
- beervirus 6y agoIt would be facepalm if it were true. These are exactly the kinds of facts that could potentially lead to summary judgment of non-infringement or even invalidity. There must be more to the story.
- eternalban 6y agoThis is addressed in the OP: it simply costs too much money to mount a defense (here, using prior art) in court. p.s. software engineers could form a non-profit that is funded to push back on bogus software patents, to address the cost barrier, since most small players and independents in the software space will benefit from it. Here GNOME could have asked this hypothetical org to cover the legal cost and kill that patent once and for all.
- colejohnson66 6y agoIsn’t that part of what the EFF does?
- beervirus 6y agoNo, that’s not the point he’s making. > One of the problems for the target is that once the patent is issued by the USPTO, the court must presume it is valid, so any defence that impugns the validity of the patent can’t be decided at summary judgment. In the GNOME case, the sued project, shotwell, predated the filing of the patent by several years, so it should be obvious that even if shotwell did infringe the patent, it would have been prior art which should have prevented the issuing of the patent in the first place. Unfortunately such an obvious problem can’t be used to get the case tossed on summary judgement because it impugns the validity of the patent.
- ikeboy 6y agoBut OP falsely claims that summary judgment is impossible. This just isn't right. Summary judgment is possible whenever there's no genuine dispute about material facts after discovery. If the facts show prior art, the judge can absolutely grant summary judgment. See e.g. https://casetext.com/case/old-reliable-wholesale-4 https://casetext.com/case/old-reliable-wholesale-4 for a case invalidating a patent on summary judgment.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoThat's true. But discovery isn't free, either. When the other side can ask for you to produce a million pages of documentation, which you have to produce before you can get to summary judgment, that's an economic problem for someone like Gnome.
- ikeboy 6y agoDocuments are supposed to be relevant. If you only want to fight on a core legal issue and don't dispute the facts, you should be able to cut down discovery significantly. Which may not be an advisable approach, if the facts alleged are false.
- beervirus 6y agoYou can get summary judgment before full discovery.
- ikeboy 6y agoIn fact, it's even possible to invalidate a patent on a motion to dismiss. See https://www.knobbe.com/news/2018/12/invalidating-patents-under-§101-early-stages-litigation-still-possible-post-berkheimer https://www.knobbe.com/news/2018/12/invalidating-patents-und...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Symmetry 6y agoThe dorm I was in at MIT, Random Hall, got sued at one point for violating a patent on connecting laundry machines to the internet. A patent that was filed for shorty after the second time the dorm's laundry servers appeared on Slashdot. Thankfully MIT had our backs.
- neiman 6y agoEvidence #trillion against the patent system, at least when it comes to software.