On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Mark Taylor wrote:
> Related to patents, today on slashdot there is a story about Corel
> being sued by the patent holder who came up with the brilliant idea of
> side-by-side text file comparisons. The one good thing in the
> article: it said only 1 in 50 of these types of law suites ever
> succeed.
The problem, however, is that they actually get decided in court (instead
of the patent office making sensible decisions). When a small company, or
even worse, an independant free software developer, gets a "pay up or shut
down" letter, they shut down. Even if you think the patent is ridiculous,
you need to have the resources to fight it in court. Bad situation...
Mike
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