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MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims
Camel Pilot writes "Patent claims have reached a new low when "inventor" Witold Ziarno sued the American Red Cross for using the web to accept donations. This MSNBC article discusses this case and how it was beat using web archives and prior art!
Also Pangia Intellectual Property has given up hope on extracting fees from small e-commerce websites for its supposedly patent on e-commerce. The only problem with the PanIP case is that they got away without having to pay for the legal fees for the defense in an obvious abuse of the system." (See this previous post for more on PanIP's dropped case.)
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
The actual argument for patents is that, without patents, people who use new inventions and innovations would waste huge amounts of effort keeping their discoveries secret from the competition.
The patent process is designed to encourage inventors to publish their ideas so that other people can build off of them. And after a number of years, the patent expires, and anyone can use the work for free.
My dad was looking to apply for a patent on something a few years ago. The problem is that it was something like $2000 just to apply! This is why they are mainly granted to big companies, because the have the monetary backing.
Problem with loser pays ( like here in canada ) is that you can never win a court battle against a large corporation. ( Well that and the fact that our lawyers cant get a certain % of your winnings and they have to be paid pretty much up front. ) But if you go to sue Bell Canada ( aka Verizon North ) and you loose, guess whos in debt because Bell threw 10-15 lawyers at the problem. Looser pays is a good idea but it can have its drawbacks.