On 11 August 2011 03:38, Robert Casto <[email protected]> wrote:
> And who can compete harder than a company full of money and people? With > those kinds of resources, they are sure to beat you to the punch and there > will be nothing to stop them from beating you to a releasable product. In > order to be first, you will have to release a trash version first and then > polish it later. > > There doesn't seem to be a winning hand here. The patent office has already > started us down this road and it doesn't appear that we can backtrack or > take another path. All our options seem equally bad. > > Make patents a two-phase process. 1. File the thing, in most cases the USPTO will accept it as written 2. Validate it. For an additional (fixed) fee, the USPTO will investigate the patent fully. This will be the full investigation that everybody would like to see done in the first place. I'd also like to see a website listing all patents currently under such investigation, and inviting evidence of prior art. All presently existing patents should be considered as filed, but not validated. No patents could be used in a lawsuit or to collect fees until validation has been performed. There should be a grace period in which current licence arrangements continue, so long as the relevant patents are immediately submitted for validation and pending the result of this. If a patent is found to be invalid, then all licence arrangements are rendered void. Under such a system, anyone using a validated patent can be far more confident of success. I imagine lawyers would then be far more willing to take cases on a no-win-no-fee basis, making such action financially viable for even solo inventors taking on large corporate sharks. -- 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.
