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US Gov't Sides Against Microsoft In i4i Patent Case
Julie188 writes "In the ongoing patent infringement case between i4i and Microsoft, i4i has won a powerful ally: the US government itself. The US solicitor general, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, on Friday filed an amicus brief in support of i4i, saying that the US Patent and Trademark Office should not be second-guessed by a jury. i4i, which won a $290 million patent judgment against Microsoft, has now accrued 22 amicus briefs in its corner, representing more than 100 companies, organizations and individuals, including venture capitalists, individuals from the military and now, the government. Meanwhile, Microsoft has so far lined up 20 amicus briefs, representing about 60 companies and individuals, including Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Red Hat, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 37 law and economics professors. At issue is how much evidence is required to invalidate a patent."
The patent is essentially over a mapping of architecture and content of a document in XML. It describes using a mapping scheme to map the two together thus separating them from being stored solely in the document. It's essentially a patent that describes nothing whatsoever beyond storing information about a document performing a particular form of hashing. Shouldn't be a patent.
There's no agency in government that should be accorded the singular privilege of not having to be second-guessed by a jury.
True enough, but despite the article's paraphrasing that's not what the brief from the Solicitor General actually says. The brief says that juries can screw up, and that lowering the standard needed to get claims like this to a jury will create disincentives to both inventing and patenting inventions.
"The clear-and-convincing-evidence standard also furthers the reliance interests created by a patent grant by affording the patent holder enhanced protection against an erroneous jury finding of invalidity. By allowing a lay jury to second-guess the PTO's judgment even in close cases, the preponderance standard would diminish the expected value of patents and would reduce future inventors' incentives to innovate and to disclose their inventions to the public."
Uh huh, let me tell you a little story bud. my mom did her civic duty, even used up her vacation time to sit on a jury. Afterward she came in looking like a ghost and said "NEVER take a jury trial EVER! ALWAYS take a judge!" when I asked her what happened here is what I was told:
It was a simple arson case which frankly never should have been brought to trial. The investigator admitted under oath he didn't know WHAT had started the fire, couldn't even say for sure it was arson, the guy had NO motive as he didn't even have enough insurance to cover the place and was gonna have to file bankruptcy and probably lose his home as well, yet the jury voted 11 to 1 to convict Why would they do that with no evidence? "Because he is Italian and Italians are in the mob and burn buildings. Haven't you seen Goodfellas?" That's right children, if my mom hadn't been on the jury that guy would be 10 to 20 thanks to a Joe Pesci performance.
As for TFA MSFT should have done the smart thing and just bought the company out. It just shows what a shitty leader Ballmer is compared to Gates because once it looked like they had a chance Gates would have just bought them out and called it a day. The last thing MSFT needed was more negative publicity, especially with regards to their Office suite which is what this is about. They should have just bought them out and moved on.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.