On Thursday 24 February 2005 10:08 pm, Andrew Suffield wrote: > That's always a joke. These things are meaningless to big > corporations; patent penalties are just a slap on the wrist to > them. Their only significant application is when big corporations with > big mobs of lawyers go after little guys.
I don't believe that Microsoft's $500,000,000 judgment in the Eola case was a slap on the wrist. And like I said, the issue here is NOT penalties, its equitable injunction. Debian and others would be barred from using the patent. Find me a case where the "big corporation" goes after the "little guys" for any sizable money damages. In the mean time, I figure I have access to some of the United State's brightest legal minds on the issue of patents (yes, I understand the irony here... believe me when I say that my fellow patent students got a very different experience than most as my professor and I yelled at eachother about the merits of software patents) at my finger tips... so I've bounced a question over to her as to this treble damage issue. We'll see if she has anything to say about what it means to "willfully" violate a patent. I'll preface it now, as I will again when I report on what she says, this is not legal advice and should not be construed as such, I am not a lawyer yet and she is not acting as any sort of legal counsel to this list, Debian, or any poor developer who may cross paths with this e-mail while doing a google search on '$500,000,000' + 'treble'. *sigh* I hate having to write that all the time... -Sean -- Sean Kellogg 2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org] c: 206.498.8207 � �e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] So, let go �...Jump in � ...Oh well, what you waiting for? � �...it's all right � � ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
