On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 08:41 -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote: > I just wanted to add a followup here on this. > First note that the patents involved should expire in December, 2008. > But there is a more in-depth discussion that PJ had with a retired > patent attorney. Basically, I think that the reason for filing this > suit now is that, assuming the patents are about to expire, it is just > another battle launched to damage FOSS. Those companies who view FOSS > and Linux as the enemy are just using this as another tool in their > chest. Again, the company who launched the suit is a patent troll, a > company that acquires old patents and makes money by enforcing them or > receives money from other sources. > > http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071016234739918 > >
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). -Alex > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
