How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters) [LWN.net]

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 14, 2011 0:55 UTC (Sat) by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
In reply to: How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters) by butlerm
Parent article: How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Since there wouldn't be any actual damages (it's free!), nor any profit from which to make restitution, anyone who sued would have to elect for statutory damages.

The maximum for statutory damages is $30,000 ($150,000 for willful infringement), plus maybe attorney's fees. Statutory damages are per *work*, not per infringement. So I'm sure they'd be happy to cut a check for $30,000 from their $5,000,000.

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How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 15, 2011 4:58 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

A while back I helped prove to a judge that Open Source developers do suffer real economic damage from license violations and can claim more than statutory damage. But the issue is probably moot in this case, when Bedrock says it's "their" code they are only talking about the patent.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 16, 2011 13:41 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] (1 responses)

Bedrock doesn't own any "code" here though. They have a government granted monopoly on an algorithm. Claiming to own someone else's code is a fraud. If it were my code, I would be inclined to sue them for slander of title, especially since trivial changes are probably all that would be necessary to escape their patent dragnet.

How Yahoo won the Bedrock patent trial that Google lost (Thomson Reuters)

Posted May 16, 2011 14:17 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

> They have a government granted monopoly on an algorithm.

s/\./ and any implementations thereof./

HTH.