On 08/09/11 02:29, Rudolf Polzer wrote:
> Is US patent law really that retarded?
US patent law shares a common feature with most other patent systems:
No matter how carefully you word the patent or read the patent, the
only way to really find out whether something is a patent violation
is to go to court and see if a judge or jury, all made up of non-engineers
who don't understand the details, decide you're guilty of patent infringement.
All attempts to apply carefully reasoned logic to patents fail when they hit
this one illogical and unpredictable step, with potentially expensive results.
The US patent system has a bonus feature though - if you knew about that patent
in advance, then they can triple the amount of money you lose in the lawsuit,
which is why most companies advise their engineers to avoid knowing anything
about another companies patents, much less how to engineer around them.
Sadly, the much needed patent reform doesn't seem to be coming, while the
patent trolls and lawsuits keep rising.
--
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System
_______________________________________________
mesa-dev mailing list
mesa-dev@lists.freedesktop.org
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/mesa-dev
