Engineer Loses SSL Patent Case against RSA and VeriSign

MeanMF writes "eWeek reports that a jury has ruled in favor of the defendants in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by an electrical engineer who clamed rights to a technology used in the SSL protocol. Not only did he lose the case, but next week the jury will rule on whether his patents are valid at all."

Comments

Don't mean to cum off trollish

[(1337) God]

But I just don't see why every bloody patent is seen as evil on Slashdot. I agree wholeheartedly that the patent system has gotten out of control. I just don't think every single cotton-pickin' patent is evil.

In a lot of cases, businesses need patents to exist. Hey people, they need to profit ya know. For example, what would happen if Microsoft figured out how to implement Google's page rank system (which could be done via academic papers!) and implemented it on MSN? Google would have no recourse and Microsoft has approximately 80 quntillion times the resources of Google and could easily out market them.

And by the way, you trolls... the difference between patents and RFCs is that with RFCs, there's no expectations of profit. They're made in cases where the greater societal benefit outweighs potential profits as in capitalism and other successful societal systems. Many RFCs and IEEE standards are based on corporate IP anyway, especially ones dealing with network protocols. Token Ring, FDDI, and Ethernet were all proprietary standards back in the day...

Put that in your hat. Think 2x before you dis people.