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Patent Claimed on System-Level Encryption
nattt writes "The Register is reporting that a Californian firm, Maz Technologies has been granted a patent for application independant file encryption, and is now going after other companies with its lawyers to press its claims. It seems that the US patent office doesn't check very well for prior art, and their laxity is causing small firms that get attacked on infringing these bad patents a lot of money to defend themselves."
Attack the small firms first so they cannot afford to invalidate the patent. Meanwhile when the small firms start paying royalties your patent will become more established. By the way the 25 000 in royalties is nothing compared to what the case may cost. So that company will probably pay the fee if hey cannot get an early win in court.
This is an idea that sounds good on the surface but is actually very bad.
If you could sue the USPO, the majority of suits would be from companies suing to have their patents *granted*. Being able to sue would just give them a second whack at the pinata.
Normal small companies and rational individuals would not sue to have bad patents denied: if you have the money to go to trial, it's better to wait until the patent is enforced in an unfair way.
So, could you restricts suits to reimbursing the costs of unfair patents? "Unfair" would need to mean that a court had invalidated the patent or restricted its scope, so the defendant would already have gone to trial for patent infringment, and prevailed. In this case, he may well ask for court costs, and get them (especially in a David & Goliath situation) so the USPO incompetance has, in some sense, cost him nothing.
If the defendant can't afford to defend himself in court, no one is going to judge the patent to be "bad."
IANAL, etc.