Lawsuits, Red Hat, yummy....

[Jerry Feldman]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:38:24 -0400
Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:

> One thing that annoyed me is that the lawsuit was claiming "economic
> damages" and you find yourself wondering how much money could they be
> talking about when they didn't do any of the work that led to the patent
> in the first place. This would be a good situation for a court ruling
> that in effect punishes the party that brings the lawsuit for making
> false claims. The economic damages will ultimately be how much money the
> lawyers were paid to pursue the claim rather than costs of marketing a
> patented product (which they plainly haven't done).

The issue of "patent trolls" is a troubling issue because there are
companies, such as IP Innovation LLC that exist simply to enforce
patents that were filed by others. I think that it may require some
patent reform legislation to fix this. 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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