On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Paul wrote:
The US needs some fresh legislation related to the patent system. Perhaps some lower cost ways to challenge bogus patents long before you get sued would help. Right now it looks like the only way to deal with them is to wait until the threats and bullying get started.
[Long post regarding how patents are used as an offensive deterrent to competitors, and the realities of fighting a bogus issued patent.] IANAL but I'm married to a patent/trademark lawyer. One of the biggest problems is that the people who review patents at the USPTO are not deep in every market that they review for, so they can't just pull prior art (that would reject the patent) from their backside. Additionally, SOOOO many patents are filed daily, the backlog at the patent office is huge. 2-5 years to get a patent issued, and usually that means 30+ back and forths between the patent office and the patent applicant. Anyone can submit prior art during a patent application (I think), but nobody has the time to spend looking through all the patents submitted on a daily basis to see if they know of prior art that exists. This is why companies like Verizon, who have the money to argue with the patent office until they "give in" and issue a potentially bogus patent. Then companies like Vonage have to spend lots of money to defend themselves against bogus patent claims, and Verizon, even if their patents are overturned, have drained Vonage of a whole bunch of money, time and effort, which makes it difficult for Vonage to innovate, advertise, etc since so much money is going into document review, legal work, briefs, being in court, etc. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees a week, maybe even per day. My wife worked for a large patent/trademark firm in Washington DC, and just the team that would be in the courtroom cost $3000-8000 per hour. Yes, I didn't miss any zeros there. Then there is all the work that goes on outside of the courtroom, continuing at an insane hourly rate. Verizon is using these patents to outspend Vonage and bring them to their knees, because every customer Verizon loses to Vonage means a loss of $600/year/customer. If you lose 1M customers to Vonage, you don't mind spending a few million dollars to hurt your competitor, hopefully to the breaking point. I'm fairly confident Verizon didn't create the "Network Interface Device" or if they did, it covers the plastic box outside your house, not your VoIP adapter. But maybe it does. Patents have become an offensive tool for big business. If you can get a patent past the USPTO, you can start putting small competitors out of business, those who can't fight a patent battle to overturn your silly bogus patent. Then when someone is big enough to fight, if you are bigger, you can still hurt them. I don't know what fresh legislation can be introduced, but I would agree with Paul that a lower cost way to challenge patents would potentially help. The problem is you still need a lawyer to interact with the USPTO, and even that is more than some of us want to spend. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.purplecow.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
