I've served as an expert witness in several patent infringement cases and have had the (sometime uncomfortable) experience of seeing the process close-up.
It can be a very expensive and nasty process. The last case that I was involved with went on for years and cost the companies millions of dollars in legal fees. The legal process as I experienced it is not intuitive to many non-lawyers. Much of it revolves around debating the precise meaning of words and the arguments can sometimes feel like debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. While I am not allowed to talk about cases in which I was involved, here are two examples of the sort of thing that can take years and many dollars to resolve: 1. The patent says that the user can click on a link and perform some action. But in fact, it's a double click. The lawyers will argue that that a double click requires two steps so is not the same as a single click. 2. The patent says that the user can click on a link and transmit a file. But in practice, the modem needs to be initialized and presents a dialog box which requires another click. The lawyers argue that the patent is not applicable because the file is not actually transmitted when the user clicks on the link. Generally patent infringement cases hinge on whether the alleged infringing software is the "same" as the software described in the patent. Since natural language is, by nature, ambiguous there is a lot of room to argue the points. Whatever the reality, it costs a lot of money to defend a patent infringement suit. Sometimes the goal is to wipe out the competition, sometimes it's to get the competition to pay license fees. In any case it is an expensive and painful process. Charlie ============================ Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. CEO, Cognetics Corporation ============================ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
