X10 Pays $4.3 million In Damages For Pop-Unders

Black Perl writes "The Seattle Times is running an article entitled "California brothers win $4.3 million award against X10." Apparently, pop-unders are "proprietary" technology and a "business model" that X10 stole. I have mixed feelings about this. I love to see X10 get its due for the pop-unders, but proprietary technology it is not." Haha. Patents are funny.

Comments

Re:No this is not what it's for

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I'm not a capitalist so I don't even know if I should be commenting on IP issues which are a manifestation of capitalism...but anyway...

Original poster: Of course, the advantages of being first to market would be worth a lot more in the absence of IP law.

I don't know what the original poster meant by that. I would imagine that the advantages will be the same as with IP law. IP law should not impact that. Anyway...

If you're first to market, and someone else can offer the same service for 25% cheaper in two months, in a capitalistic society people will buy from the latter.

I don't know where you get the 25% figure from. Is that the cost needed by the original company to recoup investment? In any case, the first company to sell the product will have an advantage. I guess the two main ones are: knowledge, and economies of scale. The economies of scale argument is obvious: if you managed to produce say 10,000 units when your competitor is starting off with 0, your costs should be lower. The second reason is knowledge. What I mean here is that company that invented the product SHOULD know more about the technology and science behind it.

And yeah, that even could potentially include software stuff. Much as it sucked, RSA was probably a valid patent. Thank goodness it's expired though. :)

You are being hypocritical there. If RSA patent is valid then why are you happy that it expired? I don't think RSA is a big mega corporation with tons of profits. One can argue that, if you believe in patents, RSA should own the patent for say the next 50 years.

Ultimately, IP law basicaly boils down to the classic conflict in capitalism. Namely, the conflict between consumers and businesses. Consumers want perfect competition while businesses want to create a monopoly. Businesses like IP law because it is used to create a monopoly (businesses call it "barrier to entry") while consumers don't like it.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

future IP "dot com" boom??

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I predict that the future will entail companies simply registering or applying for a endless amount of patents and then farm it off. This will be similar to the dot-com rush where companies registered an endless amount of '.com' web domains simply to sell it off...Let's see if I'm right...

Sivaram Velauthapillai