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I'll be the first to tell you I'm not an expert in patent law but the point I'm trying to make is this: if patents on software are truly about protecting legiti
by rgrieselhuber 13y ago
I'll be the first to tell you I'm not an expert in patent law but the point I'm trying to make is this: if patents on software are truly about protecting legitimate interests and not intended to encourage anti-competitive behavior, then we could fix a lot of what's wrong by requiring patent-holders to only sue up, as one example.
- diminoten 13y agoThat specific suggestion is more or less impossible to implement. How would you determine what "up" is?
- bdamm 13y agoWouldn't it be measured by the claimed damages?
- diminoten 13y agoWhat does that change, except for forcing mom-and-pop inventors to go after GE?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoIt would actually prevent this exact situation - stopping larger companies from suing upstart competitors.
- diminoten 13y agoHow would it stop that at all? Explain how this would work, in practice. So Google sues Joe Individual over patent infringement. What now?
- dublinben 13y agoThe case could be thrown out. Google gets nothing, Joe continues to infringe.
- diminoten 13y agoThat's... what? No one has mentioned this yet, and that's completely absurd anyway.
- nknighthb 13y agoGoogle would be suing the wrong entity and the case would be dismissed by an unamused judge who sanctions Google's lawyers for being idiots who wasted the court's time. Google needs to sue the limited liability entity Joe is working within.
- diminoten 13y agoIndividuals can infringe on patents too.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoDoesn't seem that hard. Revenue, market cap, funding, to name just a few.
- diminoten 13y agoDo you, personally, have a market cap?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoFor private companies, that equates to valuation. So, yes.
- diminoten 13y agoNo, I mean you specifically.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoI don't think there is such a thing, at a personal level. At least I've never heard of one before. Why?
- diminoten 13y agoThen how do I, diminoten, sue you, rgrieselhuber, for patent infringement, if we're basing things on "size"?
- nknighthb 13y agoYou don't sue individuals for patent infringement unless they're so stupid as to do business as a sole proprietor, which is a bad idea for a host of reasons quite aside from patent infringement. You will not find anyone with deep pockets to sue for patent infringement individually. It is distressing that someone obviously so utterly clueless about law has the top comment on this story.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoI'm against software patent law, but trying to legislate only suing up takes an awful thing and makes it even worse. People would construct multiple businesses around the premise of keeping each one smaller than the dominant player. It would take the existing bureaucratic nightmare and add an entire new level of complexity to it.