This is clearly absurd. While revisions of patent law are certainly needed, and while Trevor Baylis may have a point that the current legal system is, due to th

This is clearly absurd. While revisions of patent law are certainly needed, and while Trevor Baylis may have a point that the current legal system is, due to the cost of litigation, unfairly skewed towards large companies, criminal law is a thoroughly inappropriate way to pursue patent violators. The BBC [1] ran a similar article yesterday and included some responses from members of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, which I have excerpted below. But the defenders of the present system say changing the law may not be the right answer. Patents can be extremely complex things and the criminal law is simply too blunt an instrument to use when disputes arise. Peter Jackson is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. "First of all you've got to decide whether the patent covers the thing properly", he says. "And having done that you've got to decide whether what the alleged infringer is up to falls within that strict wording. "That can take days and weeks and months of deliberation by highly skilled lawyers, and I'm not sure the criminal system is well-suited to that kind of action." Other members of the institute are more forthright. One calls the idea of criminalising patent infringement "barking mad". ... "Honest, decent people running reputable businesses infringe patents. They might not know the patent exists, or their patent attorney might have told them it was invalid or not infringed." [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8232130.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8232130.stm