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> If you take somebody to court and you lose the case then you pick up the cost of the defence and courts time. Or: "IBM just screwed me over, but if I sue the
by derleth 14y ago
> If you take somebody to court and you lose the case then you pick up the cost of the defence and courts time.
Or: "IBM just screwed me over, but if I sue there's a chance I'll lose, and the penalty for losing is orders of magnitude greater than I could possibly afford. Guess IBM gets to keep screwing me over."
- ScottBurson 14y agoFrom what I've read, loser-pays is standard practice in Europe, and judges have final say over the amount, which must be reasonable.
- slantyyz 14y agoI think it's like that in Canada too.
- pmccool 14y agoAlso the case in Australia and the UK. Not that the winner gets all their costs back (60% is a figure I've seen bandied around) but it still creates a significant disincentive. Probably a good thing in the case of patent trolls, but not necessarily in other situations.
- tsotha 14y agoThey're certainly welcome to the overly-litigious situation we have in the US. I would trade in a heartbeat.
- tsotha 14y agoUh huh. Which do you think is more common, your scenario or this one: "IBM is suing me using twenty overly broad patents, most of which don't even apply. I'm pretty sure I can win in court, but it doesn't matter because the legal costs will bankrupt my company long before I can get a final decision. May as well sell out for pennies on the dollar - it's my only choice."
- Groxx 14y agoTheir scenario. The amount of times I've seen breaches of e.g. open source licenses dwarfs the number of patent cases I've seen. Generally, the creator has no recourse, because they can't prove it most of the time (closed-source product), nor can they afford the court costs if they wanted to, so it just slides. Sometimes changes are made (e.g. GPL-using code open-sourced), but often they aren't, and it's largely because the offended party is small and can't properly defend themselves, so it isn't worth it.