On Tuesday, 26 August 2014 at 21:26:36 UTC, H. S. Teoh via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
D has had immutable for years! Surely that counts as prior art??
If the patent passes for whatever reason, this becomes a valid
point if and only if you have the resources to contest its
validity. The patent holder can effectively strongarm you into
paying for licensing unless you have the (upwards of) hundreds of
thousands of dollars needed for lawyer fees. They need only to
drag out the court proceedings to starve you monetarily and win
by walkover.
It's not a far stretch to make an analogy to protection rackets,
and it seems to me that the very point of patents has been
subverted.
