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A visit from the trollsA visit from the trollsPosted Oct 15, 2007 19:48 UTC (Mon) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872)In reply to: A visit from the trolls by withaar Parent article: A visit from the trolls
Well, patent holders can seek damages for past infringement on expired or nearly-expired patents. SuSE and RedHat have likely been infringing these patents from day one.
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A visit from the trolls Posted Oct 15, 2007 21:22 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] As yet there's no evidence that Novell and RedHat have been infringing these patents at all, let alone "from day one".
Just because the patent abstract makes it sound like something a product does, the actual fact of infringement or not is in the details of the claims. (And whether the patent is even valid.)
A visit from the trolls Posted Oct 15, 2007 22:01 UTC (Mon) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] Sorry, what I meant to say is that if the validity of these patents is upheld, and Novell (and SuSE before them) and RedHat are found to be infringing them, they would likely have been infringing them for well over a decade making the potential damages much larger than if the infringement was only a recent occurrence. Therefore, the fact that one or all of these patents expire soon is a fairly minor consolation for the defendants, or anybody else who has been using or selling Linux for a while.
ten years' infringement with no suit? Posted Oct 17, 2007 1:00 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] I think it should make pursuit of the suit at this late stage rather difficult if the alleged infringement has been going on in full public view for ten years without so much as a cease-and-desist letter to the supposedly infringing parties. An undefended trademark is no trademark at all -- does a similar obligation exist to actively defend a patent? Or does the system actually encourage trolls to file suits for long-term infringement just before the patent expires? Any armcahir lawyers care to comment?
ten years' infringement with no suit? Posted Oct 17, 2007 11:35 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] Unlike copyrights and trademarks, you have no obligation to defend your patents. So the system does indeed appear to encourage such trolls unfortunately. IANAL but just what I heard and speaking for myself here.
ten years' infringement with no suit? Posted Oct 17, 2007 14:06 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Another way to look at this is, it allows patent holders to not worry about suing everybody who infringes, but only those who succeed sufficiently to be worth suing. That's no advantage to those who get sued, but a big advantage to those who don't (as compared to trademark, where thousands of cease-and-desist letters every year go out to mom-and-pop sotes and websites that choose their names poorly).
ten years' infringement with no suit? Posted Oct 18, 2007 10:48 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] However, if you knew someone was infringing your patent for ten years, but only told them about it six months ago, you can only recover damages for the past six months, according to the article referred to below. Damages can only be recovered after proper notification of a patent, and then only for the larger of reasonable royalties and lost profits. Since IP Innovations had no products to write patent numbers on, and consequently no profits to lose, it appears they'll only be able to claim royalties since the date they first notified the companies they're suing of infringement. That explains why the date of first notification is a subject of some dispute in these cases... Rather nastier is the injunctive relief - they can force Red Hat and Novell to stop distributing their products until the infringement goes away. They won't want to do that, of course - but their bet is that their victims won't voluntarily withdraw products to sort out the infringement, and will settle for rather less reasonable future royalties (ideally a patent license would cost a dollar less than the total cost of withdrawing, redeveloping, and rereleasing). http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9201... (I wonder whether patents would be any more palatable if intellectual property were personal and non-transferable? That is, if the only people who could ever sue for patent violation were the individual inventors named on the patent, and corporations could only ever obtain licences for them...?)
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