Patent Warfare

H310iSe writes: "The California Recorder has an article covering another of the many ridiculous Web patents out there, this one held by TechSearch claims rights for a "'remote query communication system' patent, which covers a method for compressing and decompressing data transmitted from a server to an end user." Basically they're patenting Web servers. What's interesting is their selective enforcement, they are currently suing Greg Aharonian, one of their most vocal critics, for infringement on their patent. He's fighting it. TechSearch has quite a history of aggressive patent enforcement ("extortion" claims Intel's spokesperson Chuck Mulloy), some major players like United Airlines have caved in; Intel, however, has not (surprised?)."

Comments

Trial by money as bad as patent idiocy

[Morgaine]

Everybody is irritated at the idiocy of patent claims in the US, but the article touched on another issue as well, one that is likely to be the deciding factor in this particular patent claim. The article states, rather obviously, that Intel has deeper pockets with which to fight the action.

Money is an issue that distorts justice far more than the recent patent nonsense, and I bet that nobody sees any light at the end of that tunnel. The legal profession has very effectively perverted the course of justice in that regard, and the perversion is so endemic that we consider it quite normal and the status quo.

These two things are actually related. After all, the people that chase down patents are not productive contributors to society's building of a better world. They create nothing, but merely leech off the creativity of others. They are the fine upstanding members of the legal profession, for whom logic and commonsense can be freely disregarded when sophistry and technicalities are judged to yield a better paycheck.