I have to come down on Jared's side here. You can talk about it all
you want. You will not be hauled away in the middle of the night. You
will not be prevented in any way from saying anything you like. You
will not wind up in jail, and you will not be charged with anything
stemming from this discussion here (at least not at this point --
anyone trying to overthrow the government with Axure has a separate
problem...or two). On the contrary, everything we are talking about
is discovery processes conducted entirely above board and according
to the legal processes in place for finding evidence.
HOWEVER you or anybody else who discussed it (including me) may
someday find themselves working for a company that is being sued or
is suing in a patent case, or where this discussion means that you
were one of the parties to a discussion in which that person
participated, where there are some legal similarities (and do not for
one millisecond believe that what that means is predictable to a
layman) and your communications wind up as possible evidence and are
therefore subject to a subpoena duces tecum, or other similar
discovery process, which means they go through all your emails to
find evidence they reasonably believe may exist and which they have
convinced a judge that it is reasonable to believe such evidence
exists.
There is absolutely NOTHING in this that is in opposition to the Bill
of Rights or any other portion of the Constitution. In fact, it is
the result of somewhat rigorous adherence to the laws of those
documents.
All of that to the side: Can we please agree that the discussion of
any particular patent *at the very least* be labelled as [Patent]? It
probably won't be adequate to avoid the issues, but having a filter
in place that sends such discussion immediately to the trash before
viewing and if it predates the discussion that follows may ease
potential issues.
It would be far better if we could set up a separate mailing list for
these discussions, but I'm not really in a position to suggest that.
Katie
"This is neither a freedom of speech or a bill of rights issue. This is a
will-I-be-hauled-into-deposition-and-deposed-on-emails-in-my-inbasket
question."
--
----------------
Katie Albers
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