Slashdot Mirror
NTP Gets a Taste of Its Own Medicine
UltraAyla writes, "NTP's patent suits seem to have attracted the attention of Oren Tavory, a man who claims to have worked on a project with NTP founder Thomas Campana back in 1991. From the article: 'In September, Tavory filed a lawsuit against NTP in U.S. District Court in Richmond, VA, demanding that a judge issue a court order naming him as co-inventor on seven NTP patents, and accusing NTP of copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.'"
Ah, Lawsuits. Is there any problem you can't solve?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Live by the patent, die by the patent. Or maybe it was swords. Nah I'm pretty sure it was patent.
the fact that you can actually sue someone for "unjust enrichment" is sort of awesome.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Hope he has some documentation to back up that claim.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
#16787401
NTP, as far as I can tell, is simply "NTP, Inc" it is not an acronym like RIM (research In Motion).
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
"the fact that you can actually sue someone for 'unjust enrichment' is sort of awesome."
Well if you can invade a country for simply suspecting unjust enrichment, I'd think being able to sue for it is a given. *Ba-dum*ching*
[Parent]
Patenting the shape of the corners of a gift card and the tsunami of other meaningless patents overwhelming the PTO will not bring about patent reform. Working the PTO, like most gov't jobs is something private industry doesn't want to do and is a relatively small portion of the Gov budget. Crying about the extra work and hiring 1 for every 100 requested reviewers is about the only way it's being addressed right now.
Clogging the (I assume federal) courts with patent related litigation will. Why? Because the courts will be asking for many more judges, clerks, infrastructure, (money$$$) to address the tidal wave of litigation.
Judges and their courts are much more expensive and much more respected than mere patent workers.
The more litigation related to frivolous patents, the better.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of [lawyer] that thrives on [patent trolls].
Lisa: But then we're stuck with [lawyers]!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the [lawyers] simply freeze to death.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
...or at least that is the best that Stout can recall. From an article in Virginia Business Magazine http://www.virginiabusiness.com/magazine/yr2005/se p05/law.shtml "...the inventor came up with the name. Stout does not even remember what it stands for, but thinks it was originally New Technology Products."
Inventorship is easy to fix but has potentially serious consequences. In the US, inventors are deemed to be owners of the patent unless or until those rights are assigned, usually to a company. An owner of a patent can profit from the patent without having to account to the other owners. In this case, for example, if this person succeeds in getting named as an inventor, and assuming that he is under no obligation through an employment or other contract to assign his rights to NTP, he can then potentially license the patents to Palm (who NTP is now suing), keep all the licensing proceeds, and effectively eliminate NTP's ability to collect anything from Palm.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.