4 ms·
Devil's advocate: I want to use your technology so I create another company to develop an infringing product and sell it to me cheap.
by dminor 13y ago
Devil's advocate: I want to use your technology so I create another company to develop an infringing product and sell it to me cheap.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- linuxhansl 13y agoThen your new company is at issue not you as a customer.
- throwawaykf 13y agoSimple, open the new company in China.
- nickff 13y agoForeign companies may be penalized by a domestic court, as liens or other pecuniary penalties may be assessed on their transactions with entities in the court's jurisdiction.
- andrewfong 13y agoThat new company is probably entitled to limited liability. So you can sue it, but all the patent holder can get is whatever assets that company has (which, if end users are paying a very cheap price for the patented technology, may not be very much). In contrast, you would personally face essentially unlimited liability if the patent holder could sue you directly.
- larrik 13y agoI don't see a moral objection to building your own versions of patented products for your own use, either, though. Putting aside stuff that shouldn't be patented: 1) Selling a product with someone else's patent seems like something that should be discouraged. Giving it away counts here, as do other distribution methods. 2) Making your own product, for your own use, that someone else has a patent on seems perfectly reasonable and should be legal, in my opinion as a layman.
- andrewfong 13y agoI'd add in "for your own non-commerical use". If you're in a market where there are only a handful of customers (e.g. the U.S. mobile market) but your invention generates an incredible amount of value for each customer, if those customers make the patented invention for their own use, that could deprive the patent holder out of a significant amount of income.
- nickff 13y agoA court can pull back the corporate veil, and penalize the shareholder(s) or director(s) of any company if these individuals are deemed to have been using the company's separate legal personality for the purpose of wrongdoing.
- scott_s 13y agoThis is a point that I think technical people miss: the law does not execute like code. Humans are in the loop, and are allowed to apply their own judgement.
- andrewfong 13y agoThis can be hard to win in practice though, especially if the infringing party's lawyers do a good job of maintaining the fiction that the corporation is a separate entitiy.