For the record, no, you don't paint yourself into corners like that. A) a previous ruling that was settled and not appealed can't be reverted due to a following ruling. Precedents establish protocols, but nothing can be retroactive, or it'd be impossible to regulate anything. B) even if it was the case, a friendly license of use under terms for a royalty or for free can clear the lot, in any temporal term.
Of course it's unlikely to happen, because shave sells solely due to its unicity, but it's a pain in the ass at practically every level. Of course seeing it challenged by a more versatile and modern system prompted the whole thing, thinking it was done in any other vein is naive at best. On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Ed Manning <etmth...@gmail.com> wrote: > All good points. > > One further thought (and again, I'm not out to defend Joe, his product, or > his, uh, marketing style): I just read the article on the Disney suit. > Now I'm no lawyer (do we have any on the list? would that be a good thing > or not?) but I'm pretty sure that once he'd reached a settlement with > Disney, he *obligated* himself, under the hurtful and dated system (how > right that description is!), to "vigorously defend" his patent against all > other potential infringers. That is, unless he now pursues legal action > against anyone and everyone who has a similar product that isn't > *explicitly* proven to be non-infringing, Disney could effectively argue > that he wasn't really protecting his rights, but was only going after their > deep pockets, and perhaps invalidate the settlement. And don't think that > Disney wouldn't be that petty... > > My feeling is that if Yeti is going to mention names, they need to > describe what led to the impasse. Was it a case of Joe's attorneys writing > a nasty bigfoot letter out of nowhere, or was it a long, civilized > conversation that ended in disagreement? For all we know, Joe may have > invited them to high tea to discuss the matter and Yeti said, "Nar, come > and get us, you *(%^&&%!" (For the record, I do not believe this is what > transpired.) All I'm saying is that it's generally unfair to lay blame at > a specific person's feet without some explanation. > > > On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 10:16 PM, Raffaele Fragapane < > raffsxsil...@googlemail.com> wrote: > >> To be honest, I'm happy the Yeti guys are mentioning context and names. >> The patent crap too often goes on behind closed courtains, unless it's >> Apple and Google battling it out on a global scale, and people don't >> realise how hurtful and dated the system is. >> >> The fact that a "best obvious" solution is getting in the way of >> development is NOT good for any of us, and that a small developer, because >> Joe isn't a large evil corp, decides to attack a much better competitor >> that could wipe his only succesful product off the market in the next two >> years through patent walling instead of through quality and improvments to >> a notoriously flawed and aging product doesn't paint him in a good light. >> Is this the kind of small developer you want empowered? I can only speak >> for myself, but I'll say no. >> >> There are many patents that are just first come first served deployments >> of ideas that had been around, sometimes even implemented, for a long time, >> this is on the edge of those cases, if not squarely within the domain. >> >> > -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
