On Wednesday 12 August 2009, Keith Clark wrote: >On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 13:48 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: >> On Wednesday 12 August 2009, James Knott wrote: >> >http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/176223.asp?from=blog_last3 >> >> Interesting. And where does this leave OOo? Are they next on the hit >> list? > >As OO.o is free, how can they stop it from being sold?
Distribution is probably the key word. I don't know how they think in a legal world, but what the judge meant was to stop the patent violation. IMO this patent will not, cannot stand. There is much prior art, some of it has to be prior to the patent application. I can recall back in RH9 days getting exasperated and freezing my own libxml version because every update brought new problems, breaking seemingly unrelated apps just because the tool they parsed their nameofprogram.rc file with was broken yet again. IMO, there should be the possibility of suitable very punitive fines being levied by the courts whose job it is to sort this crap out, when it is obvious the patent application filer did _not_ do due diligence in searching for prior art, and therefore has wasted the USPTO's time with what will be a frivolous application when somebody with deep enough pockets to protest, and a big enough dog in the fight, finally succeeds in getting such patents set aside as null & void. And these fines need to be punitive enough to convince the patent trolls of this world to do the due diligence searches cuz its cheaper to do the search, find you have no chance, than it is to file, get a nuisance patent, have it set aside eventually and pay the substantial fine. That is the only way we'll ever get rid of the majority of this crap. Make it highly unprofitable and they will find another line of work. Who knows, it might even be honest work. :) -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The NRA is offering FREE Associate memberships to anyone who wants them. <https://www.nrahq.org/nrabonus/accept-membership.asp> Never speak ill of yourself, your friends will always say enough on that subject. -- Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
