I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I'm in fact from a country that uses the french basis law system, i.e. precedence is a heck of a lot less important, but it always struck me as an easy to game system.
You and me want X. You take on devil's advocate position Y (which is the opposite of X), and I sue you for it. You secretly sabotage your own defense and we go all the way to final verdict. Whatever costs are involved (which should be manageable if you're sabotaging your own case), are secretly shared between us. Where needed we appeal a few times with the same strategy. If the precedent itself is not the final goal, I'd then go on a suing spree based on our precedent and secretly share the profits with you. Voila. English-style law system gamed. --Reinier Zwitserloot On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Fabrizio Giudici < [email protected]> wrote: > On 12/17/2010 12:19 PM, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > >> >> Ah, I see. Groklaw is a bunch of different authors and are known for >> occasional bouts of hyperbole. Nevertheless, an interesting twist, to be >> sure. >> >> >> My guess is that this case is so crazy, even groklaw can't make much sense >> of the ulterior agendas of all involved parties. >> >> >> > There's a thing that I hoped it would come out of this mess, but I'm > pessimistic. This story demonstrated, in case we weren't already convinced > of it, that we mere mortals can't just guess the patent mess. Tons of > contradictory things have been said about the GPLv2 and patents, and clearly > even lawyers don't get to a shared opinion. Initially I hoped that the turn > out of the lawsuit would shed some light, creating a sound precedence. Now I > fear that one day we'll just read "Oracle and Google are happy to announce > that...", then *some* details of the deal, but we won't be able to guess > whether each single weapon was fatal or not. > > Frankly, it's this climate of uncertainty, rather than the direct threat of > patents, that has high chances of killing, or more probably give severe > wounds, to the open source model (or at least, parts of it). In my naive > engineer mind, I was thinking whether some entities in our world, who have > the means for doing that, couldn't try to set up a sort of "driven lawsuit" > to get to the final consequences. E.g. you and me grab some patents > (something really small and with a low price, that we can afford) involved > in some way with a FLOSS license and then we sue each other claiming $1 of > damage. Of course, we don't want to hurt each other, but just probe how > lethal the patents we own are and how can really affect our FLOSS licenses. > Then bring the lawsuit until a judge deliberates and creates a precedent. Of > course, the entities doing this would need to spend a lot of money, mainly > for the lawyers. I wonder whether some open source foundation couldn't do > that. Surely, there's something practical that prevents this from happening > or getting to a meaningful end. > > > -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people > [email protected] h one > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
