Right now it is on the onus of the defendant to come up with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to defend against bogus IP claims (not just patents) as in the SCO debacle.
Now that that mess is on the verge of being closed down as baseless, who is going to pay for the damages?
Why should IBM's customers pay for SCO's insanity? How about Red Hat's? Or Auto Zone's? Or any of the other companies whose finances have been uselessly wasted by nuisance lawsuits from "individuals" who never even had the IP in the first place!
If the patent system was a database of valid patents, this wouldn't be a problem, but it's really too late. The system is so clogged with useless tripe and garbage from people using creative language to describe ideas people like Alan Kay and the Smalltalk team came up with 30-40 years ago.
All we're doing is following through on those visions now that we have the technology to do so, and anyone who wants to claim that they have a unique "patent" on the ideas involved should be the one required to prove they've done their research. If the language is confusing, send it back for rework and refiling, don't just blindly approve it!
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Re:patents will kill patents.
Posted by: msobkow on September 11, 2004 12:11 AMThe problem is a little worse than you suggest.
Right now it is on the onus of the defendant to come up with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to defend against bogus IP claims (not just patents) as in the SCO debacle.
Now that that mess is on the verge of being closed down as baseless, who is going to pay for the damages?
Why should IBM's customers pay for SCO's insanity? How about Red Hat's? Or Auto Zone's? Or any of the other companies whose finances have been uselessly wasted by nuisance lawsuits from "individuals" who never even had the IP in the first place!
If the patent system was a database of valid patents, this wouldn't be a problem, but it's really too late. The system is so clogged with useless tripe and garbage from people using creative language to describe ideas people like Alan Kay and the Smalltalk team came up with 30-40 years ago.
All we're doing is following through on those visions now that we have the technology to do so, and anyone who wants to claim that they have a unique "patent" on the ideas involved should be the one required to prove they've done their research. If the language is confusing, send it back for rework and refiling, don't just blindly approve it!
#