On Nov 17, 2010, at 1:23 12PM, James A. Donald wrote: > On 2010-11-17 10:06 PM, Ian G wrote: >> Yeah. And just on that question of patents, and so forth. IMHO, anyone >> thinking that the patents aren't valid is ignoring the business risk of >> the attack. An ethical or "unpatentability" defence is somewhere between >> worthless and financial suicide :) > > They are only going after the people with big pockets, and the people with > big pockets do not necessarily capitulate. >
Capitulate? The word is meaningless. A big company goes through a very simple calculation: the patent owner (troll or otherwise) wants $X, tripled because of (alleged) willful infringement. $3X is therefore at risk. It will cost $Y to defend against the suit; if you lose, and the probability of that is Z, you're out $Y + $3X. Even if you win, you're out $Y, and if you win on grounds of non-infringement (i.e., the jury felt that the patent was valid but you didn't use the protected technology), the plaintiff may be back 3 years from now to go after your next release. Depending on Y, the uncertainty in Y, and the $X' << $X that the plaintiff will actually accept, you may be better off paying them to go away -- better off in a financial sense, since that's all that matters. Corporations don't have moral principles, it seems; they have bottom lines. You're not capitulating, you're making a business decision on how best to reduce your costs, even if they're just $Y. As for small companies -- a win against a small company can be used later on. The defendant may move for reexamination by the patent office, but once that's happened -- even if the challenge is poor -- the patent owner is in a stronger position; see, for example, the discussion of estoppel in https://www.eff.org/wp/patents-and-public-domain . Beyond that, a win against a small company can be used in the economic damages section of a trial against a big defendant, as proof of the value of the patent. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
