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by dathinab 1830 days ago
Hm this is basically on the level of patenting pulling your wallet out of your green pocket to pay for a coffee at a street food shop.

Or cutting wood with a knife to then use it to build a chair.

I.e. while you need the result of the first part to do the second part, how you do the first part and how you do the second part are completely unrelated.

Honestly given the large degree of economical damage such patent trolling does it's sad to see that laws hasn't been updated to involve serve penalties for anyone trying to abuse the patent system (if it's clear that it's an abuse like in this case).

Like if it's such a obvious case like this:

1) Hold the suing person responsible for all financial costs of the defender, and a penalty and personal consequences for lawyer suing.

2) Make it a crime a create "deceptive" patents. Which are not clear in what they patent or clearly (for a person with knowledge of the topic) patent trivial or obvious things which should never bee palatable.

3) Make the patent office earn more money from catching clearly bad patents then from passing them through.

Through only if it's "clear" abuse, whatever that means.

1 comments

How about requiring a jury of "peers" who actually know the first thing about the subject matter when these things do go to court.
I've tried to get onto a jury panel for IP cases. Defense attorneys do not want anyone with IP and computer skills anywhere near that panel. The easiest way to skip a jury is to claim forensic expertise. Judge William Alsup (Oracle vs. Google) is famous because he actually has sufficient CS understanding to tell when someone lies. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl...
That is also a good idea, but I would prefer if patent trolls don't even try to go to court.

Sadly with many countries law system even if you are in the right they opponent still can drive you to ruine before they lose.

So the penalties (for trolling company and lawyer) must be to a point that they won't want to risk abusing the patent system.

Having a jury that knows something about software patents, or about the domain, is emphatically not a good idea. They will second-guess the evidence, ignore the attorneys' pleadings and the judges instructions, and pull a verdict out of their ass, because "they know better".