Sequoia Threatens Over Voting Machine Evaluation

enodo writes "Voting machine manufacturer Sequoia has sent well-known Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleague Andrew Appel a letter threatening to sue if New Jersey sends them a machine to evaluate. It's not clear from the letter Sequoia sent whether they intend to sue the professors or the state — presumably that ambiguity was deliberate on Sequoia's part. Put another clipping in your scrapbook of cases of companies invoking 'intellectual property rights' for bogus reasons." Sequoia seems to be claiming that no one can make a "report" regarding their "software" without their permission.

Comments

Sweet.

[Jaysyn]

Yes, that is *exactly* what we want Sequoia to do. Sue a Priceton professor & *security* researcher.

Bullet. Meet foot.

Re:Speechless.

[The Ancients]

Just speechless.

That's often the results with certain voting machines.

Re:handy though

[MightyMartian]

There is an alternative to all of this. New Jersey can simple remove Sequoia from the list of companies they're considering for voting machines. I mean, if they don't have it already, they can simply pass law stating that all those submitting bids for supplying the state with voting machines must make a machine available for independent review by an organization or institution of the state's choice. If Sequoia doesn't like those terms, they don't have to bid.

It's true, however, that IP claims are getting out of hand when a government and/or institution doing some work for the government is threatened with a lawsuit over testing hardware. These events are only going to get more egregious and ludicrous until Washington and the courts start handing these abusers their proverbial balls on a platter.