Bret,
I agree with you on every point.
I would say that is the Evolution's major stopper, because small
companies just afraid to develop anything,
knowing that someone big can have some broad patent.
All the Best!
Sergey.
Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:
On 2/21/07, *Sergey Kuznetsov* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
That's easy!
Dan Ravicher of Public Patent Foundation (pubpat.org
<http://pubpat.org>) does that.
In reality that only solves the minor half of the problem. The biggest
thing america needs in this particular arena is tort reform. If the
loser has to pay the winners court costs, then you would
*dramatically* see the number of frivolous cases (including bogus
patent suits) drop. There will always be crackpots with more money
than sense filing stupid cases, but this would make people think twice
before filing.
The way it stands now people can file stupid suits against you, you
can win every one (and unless you won on summary dismissal its hard to
counter sue for court costs, although not impossible) and you sitll
file bankrupcy. See the cult awareness network vs 20 'random' church
of scientology members where those people paid $200 to sue, lost every
case, but CAN spent about $1M defending itself. The church of
scientology bought CAN out of bankrupcy right after the suits were
over. Amazing how CoS is no longer listed as a cult by them.
Patent reform does need ot happen, but tort reform is much more
important. Who has a big hand in drafting laws? Lawyers. Who
profits the most from stupid insane lawsuits? ... Coincidence that
lawyers are very opposed to tort reform saying it will prevent people
from ever filing with cause?
Tort reform would solve most of the patent problems, if a company
refuses to sue because their patent is bogus (j2's patent on fax2email
is based on someone elses patent which is based on j2s press release,
RTI in NY has a patent on LCR which is bogus due to 10 years of prior
art, sprint claims over 100 patents (and sued vonage as well), verizon
claims 85 or so patents, the list goes on).
It costs $1-2M minimum to fight a patent case on average, RTI charges
$20k licensing fees, and has gotten vonage (after an initial pre-ipo
fight then when the sprint case came up vonage settled), cisco,
lucent, and many others to settle because its cheaper, google called
shenanigans on it and grabbed their brooms, RTI filed for $6B, case is
pending. J2 charges $1 or so per customer for fax2email. Unless you
have millions of customers its just not worth it.
Sprint and verizon appear to only go after bigger companies that
actually have money. They dont have to stop there, they can try to
squelch anyone that poses enough of a threat before they get big
enough to actually defend themselves...
If tort reform happens, then companies run the risk of losing their
patent AND paying for the defense on the people they tried to extort.
That will certainly stop a lot of people, especially since you might
get a better defense if you have a real case against the bogus patent.
It has been the policy of the USPTO to issue the patent, without
regard for its validity and let the courts decide the matter later on,
this has gone on for at least 15 years, maybe more. This certainly
needs to change, I dont want to sound like I am minimizing patent
reform, I just see it as the lesser issue in the whole process.
--
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel
Belfast +44 28 9099 6461 US +1 516 687 5200
http://www.trxtel.com the VoIP provider that pays you!
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