Google and Others Sued For Automating Email

Dotnaught sends us to InformationWeek for news of the latest lawsuit by Polaris IP, which holds a patent on the idea of responding automatically to emails. The company has no products. It brought suit in the Eastern District in Texas, as many patent trolls do — though the article informs us that that venue has been getting less friendly of late to IP interests, and has actually invalidated some patents. The six companies being sued are AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo. All previous suits based on this patent have been settled.

Comments

there aught to be a law againts this..

[josepha48]

.. there really should be a law against someone getting a patent and not using it, especially in software. The whole purpose of a patent is to give someone the opportunity to make money from selling their patent before it become public domain. The idea of getting a patent and then just using it to sue other people who implement that technology without them knowing of your patent, seems to me that it would invalidate your patent, but showing that it is 'obvious to one of ordinary skill, in the art...'. Thus the patent should be voided for being an obvious invention.